Exhausting day

Well it all started with me finding Nathan's Mic-key button (feeding tube) on the floor next to his crib this morning at 6:30 AM. My heart sank as it always does when this happens. This time it happened in the middle of the night and yes the stoma had closed up and I was unable to get his button back in. The stoma was closed up, I've never seen it that way before so it must of happen early in the night (6 to 8hrs before i found it on the floor) The Mic-key balloon had a huge hole in it which is why it came out and unfortunately the one he had in his tummy was my back up ( I changed it two weeks ago).... Just my luck....

Fortunately Nathan had another back up button at Mimi's house (where he sometimes goes for respite care) and so we had to track down the manager of the respite home to try and get the spare button as the hospital does not have any on hand. We did eventually get it but that took about 2 hours, so while Sean did all the tracking down of people and running around I waited in emergency with Nathan as he had been admitted. ( yes so much fun isn't it?)

The ER nurse then thought that a pediatric Dr up in surgical daycare might be able to re-insert his button but we later found out that Dr. Golonka ( Nathan's surgeon who did the g-tube) is actually off on Maternity leave with twins and the other Surgeon is on holidays until August 31. My hear sank again... Now what? Were we going to have to go to Vancouver to Childrens hospital to have surgery to re-open his stoma????

No... we got sent back down to emergency and the ER Dr was amazing.. He tried to re-insert but Nathan was in too much pain. I lost it, I was crying... my baby was hurting too much. The ER Dr then suggested we sedate Nathan and then he could gradually open the stoma up by inserting different sized catheters into his stoma, stretching it. As Nathan has had a g-tube for sometime, the stoma was well established and it was just a matter of trying to reopen, but to do that without hurting Nathan would require sedation. I worried about complications with sedation and RTS but Nathan has never reacted to any previous sedations and the ER Dr. reassured me he would probably be OK. So I decided that was the best option (avoiding surgery) It worked and Nathan wasn't in any pain. The Mic-Key re-inserted and no complications with sedation meant that we could finally go home. We left the emergency room at 1:45pm to come home. I gave him a bit of tylenol as his stoma was tender to the touch, but aside from that he seemed to be his normal self. He had a drunk like appearance until about 4:30 or so when the sedation finally wore off. They had warned us that this might happen.

I'm absolutely exhausted but so relieved that we were able to get that Mic-key button back in without surgery to do it.

Did I mention today was a vacation day from work? Some day huh?