Absence makes the heart...

Allow me to explain why it has been a few days since anything has been posted.  Overnight on Monday at around 2:30 a.m., my stomach was hurting bad enough that it woke me up.  Within 30 minutes, I was in the bathroom with a trash can sitting in front of me.  Both receptacles were eventually needed.  It was not pretty.  From 2:30 yesterday morning until I went to bed last night, I got about 3 hours of sleep, total.  Not fun.  I was too worn out to think about a post and, since I can't go to the hospital (where Allison is) to see Ayden while I am sick, there was no way for me to get her our laptop so she could put something up.

So, I had a stomach virus early yesterday morning and a fever yesterday evening.  Remember the MAD (Mom and Dad) rule?  "If you have recently been sick, think you might be sick, have been around someone who is sick, have contemplated taking a sick day even though you really weren't sick, you are not allowed to visit Ayden."  I have had to apply that rule to myself.  Thus, at the very least, I did not go to the hospital yesterday and will not go today, either.  Whether or not I can go tomorrow will depend on how I feel today.

And boy does that suck.  Not only do I not get to see my son, I don't get to see my wife, either.  This is certainly not how I drew it up.  To potentially make matters worse, Allison's stomach felt a little "uneasy" overnight, so she is having to stay away from him today, just in case.  This means nobody is holding him.  That sucks, too.

I want to give a special word of thanks to Josh and Beka.  They have been housing me during the week so I'm not so far away.  I know they weren't expecting to have a sick person in their house, but they have gone above and beyond and have been incredibly gracious in taking care of me.

***

As for Ayden, he seems to be content with keeping the doctors and nurses on their toes.  As you recall, over the weekend he didn't get any food for 48 hours because he had blood in his stool.  After running several tests and not seeing anything else of note, they started him back on food on Sunday.  He had several diapers that were negative for blood, then Monday night there was one that barely tested positive.  They stopped his feeds, x-rayed, again didn't see anything else, so started him back.  All the subsequent dirty diapers came back negative until last night, when again one tested positive, they stopped his feeds, x-rayed, didn't see anything else, and started the feeds again.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  What's the significance of all of this?  I have no idea.

What else?  He has thrown up once each of the last two nights.  I suppose that's normal for a little kid.  The doctors apparently aren't concerned about it.  We are working with the speech pathologist on getting him to practice for his next swallow study.  I had some success with getting him to drink 5ml of formula on Monday.  Yesterday, though, he was apparently content to just hold the bottle in his mouth, steadfastly refusing to even attempt to swallow anything.  Then, late yesterday afternoon, he drank 10ml of formula.  Go figure.  His anti-SVT medication has been dropped down to once a day, rather than twice.  The "pacing study" - in which they try to induce an SVT to see where the impulses are and to confirm or deny that the medication dose he is getting is enough - should be happening soon.

I think that gets us caught up.  Really, as to Ayden, the last couple days have been relatively uneventful.  I am the one that has had all of the problems.  I guess that's a trade-off I would gladly make at any time.