Jayden Sick Again

A couple of weeks ago Jayden aspirated while attempting to eat pureed foods at school. I could tell right away that afternoon that he was in desperate need of some breathing treatments. I had no idea that it would turn into aspiration pneumonia. Initially I dealt with the crackly sounds coming from his chest at home like I always do. I always hesitate to go to the doctors office for fear he will get sick from one of the other patients. After a week of breathing treatments and not much progress I decided that it was time to go see our Pediatrician. Dr. Cahill wasn't available so we saw Dr. Waters. All the docs at Pediatric Associates of Stockton are awesome with Jayden. She suggested antibiotics, chest x-ray, and bromide to help clear up his wet cough. The x-ray confirmed aspiration pneumonia and we decided to check back in a couple of days. Unfortunately Jayden couldn't hold off more than 24 hours before I was forced to call Dr. Waters. He took a turn for the worse and started vomiting, which was strange for him. He couldn't hold anything down no matter how much I slowed up the feeds. Dr. Waters decided that even though I was very well equipped to take care of Jayden at home it was time to admit him and get some extra fluid going through his port. I had never seen Jayden have so many secretions. He was so extremely juicy and was having a hard time swallowing. The following day Jayden really scared me when he vomited old blood. At first I was worried but then I just got upset because I seemed to be the only one worried about it. G-tube complications, it happens.... that was their response. They started him on Ranitidine which was supposed to settle his stomach. It is actually used for acid reflex. It seemed to work a little bit. A day later Jayden was sent home to finish recovering at home with Mommy as his personal nurse. He still couldn't tolerate his normal feeds. I had to give him 30 cc's (1 oz) per hour until I could gradually bump it up as he could tolerate it. It has almost been one week since he came home and he's just now back to his normal feeds. In July, Dr. Sullivan (Neurologist) started Jayden on Banxel, which has side effects including vomiting. We decided during this whole mess to take Jayden off this med. This was good because the vomiting stopped but bad because he had a very hard time getting it out of his system. He has been irritable and whinny all week. His movement disorder has been so out of whack that he sweats through his clothes and wakes up with his whole head soaking wet. Each day it gets better. This week I started Physiology. Thank God Jayden is better because I don't know what I would do. This is my last class required before I apply for the nursing program in April. Episodes like this one make me realize how wonderful the good days are and how much I dread the bad ones. God is good because we seem to have more good days than bad days. I pray it stays that way.

Summer Fun!

Summer break went by really fast. But we did manage to have some fun in the sun before the kids started back to school. Jose and I took the kids to Six Flags. The kids had a blast! They got to ride lots of rides and the weather was pretty nice. The crowd on the other hand was horrible. There was a ridiculous amount of people there and the whole time I was worried about people running into Jayden's chair. I am just now realizing that going on these kinds of adventures is actually more work than pleasure for me. I was completely stressed out the whole time. The accomdations for kids in wheelchairs was horrible. I couldn't find a place that I could change his diaper or hook him up to his feeds in private. At one point I had Jose and Jojo holding a blanket up for privacy while I changed Jayden while he was sitting in his chair. Some people might wonder why we wouldn't just leave Jayden at home. But why would we? He's part of the family and he goes where we go or we don't go at all. That's just how it is. In an effort to get Jayden out of the sun I took him to see all the shows which included the whale show and the sea lion show. The two teens took off on their own and checked in with us after every ride. I tried to get Jose to take Jojo and leave Jayden and I to do our own thing but he refused to seperate. I think he saw the stress in my face and knew exactly what I was thinking. It's times like this that I wish Jayden could just take off running with excitement and check everything out. So we decided to hangout and cruise the entire park checking out everything from the sharks to the lions and tigers. Jojo was in awe of everything. Andres and Jeana were bugging me the entire day to ride a roller coaster with them. I kept telling them no. Finally at the end of the night literally before the place closed down I gave in. And I am glad that I did.