Thursday, August 20, 2009

Wow!

I know I have talked with a lot of you about what has been going on with Abe. About 5 weeks ago we took Abe to Primary Children's ER since he was projectile vomiting and dehydrated. We spent 8 hours in a small room in the ER. In the room next to us there was a juvenile delinquent restrained and swearing loudly for 3 of the 8 hours. They hooked Abe up to fluids through an IV (which took 3 times to put in), did a catheter, and almost did a spinal tap. The worst part of all of this was that they wouldn't let us feed him. So, Abe screamed, and screamed and screamed. After numerous tests, they decided it was Pyloric Stenosis (which oddly enough my older sister and my nephew Koy had as tiny babies as well). They finally decided to admit him at 10:30pm (we had been there since 2pm) and put him on the surgery list for the next day. Since we were an add-on surgery they weren't really sure when the actual surgery would happen so they made us starve Abe until after the surgery. By the time they wheeled him away, he hadn't eaten for over 24 hours. The surgery was a success and we were able to give him extremely small amounts of glucose water and then formula--which didn't make Abe happy at all. Here are a couple pictures of Abe right before his surgery. Poor guy, he is so exhausted:




After Abe came home, we had to deal with severe reflux and more tummy problems. So, the screaming did not stop. The surgeon said sometimes the antibiotics given to babies during surgery can mess up the good bacteria in their stomachs. He is now on medicine and special formula.

Even writing this blog, I don't want to re-live any of it, so I wanted to make this entry as short as possible. My mom and sisters have saved my sanity. Adam was in Korea for 2 weeks and my mom, Rachel and Dana tried to console both me and Abe during the last few weeks. I am so grateful for them. Breakdown after breakdown, they have helped me hour by hour.

It is now five long weeks after the surgery and Abe seems to be doing a bit better. He is a very smiley baby and we are so happy to have him in our lives:

By the way, I blame Primary Children's for Abe's new found ability to SCREAM. If this entry doesn't exactly make sense, I blame exhaustion.