Rough Patch, Part Four

Rough Patch, Part Four

Start here to read from the beginning.

We settled in to KKI but the vomiting didn’t stop. Our son stopped being able to keep anything down at all, even water. The nurses were insistent that he was keeping some down, but they weren’t with him all day. I was adamant they needed to do something but wasn’t sure what exactly that something would be. After the weekend the senior doctor returned and checked on us early in her rounds. She told us he looked OK but she was going to draw labs just in case. Once she received the results that would inform whatever our next steps would be. I settled down with my son for a nap and did my best to keep him comfortable while they worked out a plan.

Within an hour a skittish looking nurse came and woke me up. When I say skittish, her face was completely calm. Her eyes looked terrified. She told me we were being transported. “OK… can I take care of this when my son wakes up?”
“No,” she said. “They’ll be here any minute.”
“Oh… OK,” and I started packing things as quickly as I could. The nurse reassured me that they’d figure something out as far as the items we had to leave behind. I barely got everything shoved into a bag before our son was being woken and loaded up onto the stretcher for transport. Apparently his labs had shown a significant amount of dehydration, even though he didn’t appear dehydrated when examined.

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Rough Patch, Part Two

Rough Patch, Part Two

If you didn’t catch the first part, read it first.

We were waiting for many months for a call from Kennedy Krieger’s Outpatient Feeding Program. It’s not something I had mentioned previously; I wasn’t sure how helpful it would be. When the call finally came we were so excited. There was, however, a massive “but.” Our son had begun struggling with a new medical issue, ITP (Idiopathic Thrombocytic Purpora), and we weren’t sure how well he would do in the outpatient program given the need for weekly blood draws and hematologist visits. After speaking with the program’s nurse we concluded that, while difficult, managing his care on an outpatient basis was possible. If we were already actively in the outpatient program and he needed to be transitioned to inpatient they would do their best to have us transitioned to inpatient as quickly as possible.

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