Ambrose is in the PICU.

Well...about a week ago Ambrose had a large amount of coffee grounds out of his g-tube, coinciding with diarrhea and fevers. After several phone consults with his GI Dr. and lots of pedialyte, we brought him in, following a spell of vomiting. His abdomen was quite distended and he was admitted to the hospital for further studies. His x-ray showed very distended loops of bowel. They did an ultrasound, which showed no obvious blockage, but raised concerns of possible kidney stones. He got an IV, after 3 different people tried poking him.

He had a lower GI barium study the next day. I got to watch it. It took an unusually long time for the barium to leave his stomach, but then it did pass through his intestines unobstructed. It also showed a hiatal hernia above his fundoplication that the barium refluxed into, but did not go up into the esophagus.

A urologist viewed the ultrasound and felt that he does not have kidney stones, but has renal calcification (pre-kidney stones). We will follow up with him as an outpatient.

We restarted feedings yesterday and are working back up to full feeds slowly. So far he is tolerating them OK. We are waiting for his GI Dr to scope his stomach on Monday, so we can hopefully discover the source of his frequent coffee grounds and the delayed emptying. They started him on erythromycin to increase gastric motility. He seems to feel pretty well most of the time, but has periods of distress with coughing and blotchiness, in which he needs to go up on his O2. His lungs sound pretty good though. Hopefully he will not catch anything while he is here.

By the way: it has been over a year (plus 2 weeks) since he was last hospitalized. I was very exicited to reach that milestone and was thinking of posting that but didn't want to jinx him.