Here's hoping this is just a 'hiccup' in Caleb recovery...

Wow...well, I can certainly say we never thought we would be back in Fairfax Hospital so soon! We knew if Caleb was ever sick enough for the hospital, we figured it would have to be Fairfax since the hospital closest to us just does not have the Peds department that he needs...never imagined it would so soon after his heart surgery! But here is whats going on...

Caleb was not eating well Wed. evening and was certainly not sleeping well Wed. night, but that is not unusual, esp. the sleep part since his surgery! By Thurs. morning when I tried to give him his morning bottle and the first ounce that went down, came right back up again...I knew something was up. So I took him to the pediatrician like I usually do when he is clearly not well and they thought he seemed like he had a typical stomach virus and said he did not seem dehydrated yet, but that his heart rate was up in the 150s so he wanted us to head to the cardiologist to make sure everything was still going on okay in there...so off we went to Leesburg to the heart Dr. to get checked out there as well. At this point, Caleb had nothing left in his system and was "gagging" (as I will call it) every so often. He checked out fine with the cardiologist so home we went, hoping that this was a 24 hour thing and he would be over it quickly. As the afternoon progressed and he was clearly not turning the corner to holding down pedialyte, I just took him straight to the Loudoun ER. There they hooked him up to some IV fluids and gave him some Rx med for the nausea and thought that would be enough. Needless to say, he continued to gag on a regular basis and so he was admitted. By morning, he was not doing any better and his gagging seemed to be getting worse, esp. after we tried to give him any sort of pedialyte by mouth. We started to notice his eyes were getting puffy and so next thing I know his cardiologist (the BEST Dr. in the world) was at his bedside checking him out. He still did not feel (as the cardiologist had said the day before) that this was heart related and so they needed to do further testing...this brought us to a sonogram of his abdomen. They did let him get a little morphine before attempting the sonogram as he would have NEVER been able to handle it otherwise - at this point, Caleb is clearly miserable! The sonogram of his belly showed fluid built up around his organs as well as inflammed kidneys and an undetermined 3mm 'growth' on his liver. With all this and some fancy names that go with these conditions, he was transported to Fairfax Hospital. This evening was a whirlwind after he arrived as I had to tell his "story" to his nurse, the doctors there, etc. In the end, they have NO idea why he is gagging so much, why this fluid is building up in his system and he is not peeing it out, etc. The Loudoun Hospital peds Dr. basically said it could be heart related, kidney issue, liver issue or an infection...there are a lot of pieces to a puzzle that just does not seem to go together!

We ask for your prayers as the doctors start doing a lot of tests to try and determine what is going on with Caleb's system. We pray that HE will give the Drs. quick and clear guidance as to what is going on and what has caused this. Most of all, we pray that Caleb will once again be completely healed!

Thank you,
Joanna