Thanksgiving

At the beginning of this week, I was intending to do a Thanksgiving Day post about my son Adam, giving thanks that he has had no complications since his surgeries for biliary atresia in January. But on  Monday night, as my husband and I sat bleary-eyed in the emergency room at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, we realized that he was having his first complication.

He had registered a low grade fever off and on for the past five days and been exceptionally fussy. Maybe he's teething, I thought. (Isn't that every mother's rationale for unexplainable baby behavior?) Then, on Monday afternoon, I changed his diaper and discovered that his stool was white--an indication that his bile ducts might no longer be working. His doctors suggested taking him to the lab to get some blood work done. And so, instead of running to the grocery store to get eggnog, and allspice, and Thanksgiving Day hors d'oeuvres, we zipped down to the doctor's office and had Adam's blood drawn. It would take a day or more to get the results. I was worried, but David reminded me that there was nothing to be worried about...yet.

When Adam's fever spiked to above 100 degrees that night, I called the advice nurse. After reviewing his file with the doctor on call at Doernbecher, they instructed me to bring him in to the emergency room. "It could be nothing, or it could be really bad. With his history, we don't want to take any chances." 

The blood work we had done earlier was upgraded to "stat." We arrived at Doernbecher and waited in the emergency room for several hours for the blood work to be completed. When the lab delivered the results, the liver numbers were way higher than normal, giving evidence of a possible liver infection. The next step was an ultrasound to see if there was some sort of blockage in Adam's bile ducts. The ultrasound was inconclusive. Meanwhile, Adam's fever began to go down. While the doctors conferred into the wee hours of the night about whether they should admit Adam or send him home, David tried to get our scared and screaming boy to go to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, another doctor or nurse would come in to poke and prod him into resuming his screams.

I sat in the recliner, too exhausted, too uncomfortable, and too anxious to sleep. Were his bile ducts really blocked? Was the surgery that had seemed so successful no longer working?

The doctors decided to put Adam on antibiotics in case his liver was infected. He would spend the night at the hospital and undergo more imaging in the morning to locate the assumed blockage. I drove home at 3am, hoping that my seven-months-pregnant body could get a few hours of sleep. David stayed at the hospital to deal with more doctors and more disruptions to Adam's sleep.

The Psalmist says that "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." And so it happened for us. By the time I got back to the hospital at 9am, Adam's fever had disappeared. The white bowel movement proved to be an anomaly. The head GI doctor told us that if there was some sort of sludge blocking his bile duct, it seemed to have gone away. Whatever had sent his liver numbers up in the lab tests was probably just a minor infection. They released us from the hospital at noon that day and we went home to sleep, sleep, sleep.

At the beginning of this week, I was intending to do a Thanksgiving Day post about my son Adam, giving thanks that he has had no complications since his surgeries for biliary atresia in January. At the end of this week, I can finally make my Thanksgiving Day post, and praise God that Adam's adventure at the hospital was short-lived and far less serious than it could have been.