Fun While it Lasted

Today was Ayden's first visit to the cardiology clinic (he comes back once a week while he is home, until his second surgery).  Today was also his first readmission to the hospital.  Yes, our vacation to home lasted all 4.5 days.

Ayden has a handful of minor things going on (sedation withdrawal and trouble sleeping to name two), but what is keeping him here for "observation" overnight is the presence of blood in some vomit from this morning.  The cause is probably something innocuous - e.g., aspirin or the feeding tube irritating his stomach lining - but they want to keep an eye of him for a while so they can rule out more sinister causes.  In other words, they are playing it safe.  While we do not enjoy being back in the hospital in the least, caution is certainly the better course of action.

Hopefully, everything will turn out fine and we'll be going home again either tomorrow or the day after.  If not, I suppose we'll deal with whatever comes up.  It's hard, but I'm trying to view the last few days as a needed reminder of why we are doing everything that we are, as a preview of what we trying to accomplish in the long term - having him home, all the time, without restriction.  Hopefully, this return to the hospital will be nothing more than a short step in the long march towards that goal.

Getting that taste of what we are striving for makes this easier, but it makes it harder, too.

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Jude Update:  The doctors have determined Jude's shunt (the tube put in during the surgery to allow blood to flow into the lungs to get oxygen) has clotted off.  He is scheduled to go in for surgery tonight to have this problem rectified.  Please keep him and his family in your prayers.