Judah is home again.  Michael took Judah over to Peoria to have another CT scan and to see if his drain could be removed.  Fortunately, Judah was cleared to have the drain removed, so that was done.  But in order to have the scan done, Judah had to stop eating and drinking by 9 a.m., so it was hard for him to be hungry and thirsty until his procedure.   Michael said that once it was all done, Judah cheered up considerably when he was given some apple juice and some cookies.

Judah and Michael went to McDonalds after they left the hospital, and Judah came home with a cool toy car from his Happy Meal.  He slept on the way home, so when he got home, he was tired and groggy.  But after he woke up, he was chipper and seemed like a new boy!  In fact, just a little bit ago he ran down the hallway and declared, “I can run!”  I don’t know how it feels to have a drain in, but apparently it’s the type of thing that makes a person not feel like running.  

Also tonight Judah took himself to the potty without any help for the first time since he was sick.  He marched to the potty and said, “No tubes!”  

I suppose our little guy can’t really express all the different things he’s going through, so we rely on these signs to understand.  

I’m eager to see how Judah is different tomorrow.  Maybe he’ll feel like running again.  

Our little bird has been getting closer and closer to being ready to release back into the wild. Finally, this afternoon I felt it was time to say goodbye. So I sent Laura and Isaac out to take a long walk along the bean field and let Frizz be on his way, for better or for worse.

They were gone a long time, and finally came home having said their farewells.

And I promise you, not an hour later, the kids came hollering in from the back yard with another little bird in their hands. Somehow another fledgling had wandered into our yard and Isaac caught him. Now the kids wanted to go back and see if they could find Frizz again. I said that was fine, hoping that Frizz had disappeared. But no, Frizz was exactly where he had been deposited, and apparently was waiting patiently to be rediscovered.

I insisted that no birds could come back inside, so now the children were all out back, hovering around a cage containing two wild birds. The new bird was quickly named Squeakers. I let them have their fun for a while, but when the children started squabbling over who was sitting where and who was doing what, I decided it was time to let the birds go… again.

Off they went, gone again for a while, and finally they came back again having deposited the birds safe and sound in a tree.

Isaac asked me this evening if he could go out tomorrow and see if the birds are where he left them. I thought about it for a minute and decided that would be fine.

Somehow the math curriculum we use doesn’t have complicated “story problems” like this.

If you have a bird and you let it go, how many birds do you have left? Seems like it should be zero, eh? Well, think again! I think a real-life scenario would go something like this…

If a boy and a girl take their bird on a walk to let it go, and then find another bird when they get home, and then go back out to get the first bird back again, How many birds do you have? You end up with two birds. Therefore, one minus one is two.

My hope is that now that both birds have been let go again, that two minus two doesn’t equal four!

Tomorrow Judah will go back to Peoria for another CT scan and hopefully to have his last drain removed. I already feel sorry for the little guy, because he’s not supposed to eat or drink anything after 9 a.m., and his procedure isn’t until 3 p.m. Michael is taking off work again to accompany Judah to Peoria. We are so grateful that State Farm is generous with their family sick-leave policies. Yesterday Michael told Judah about his procedure, and then promised Judah that he could choose a place to go out to eat after it is all over. Can you guess what Judah picked?

You guessed it!!!  McDonalds.  :-)  They sure have a way of getting the loyalty of our children!

We’re back together as a whole family again. Poor Judah is having to adjust to being one of many again, and not the little prince in his bed at the hospital.

Judah wanted to sleep in our room last night, but we insisted he go to bed in his own bed. So he settled down and fell asleep very quickly. Then sometime after 11 p.m. Judah cried out for some water, so Michael helped him get a drink. Then sometime around 2 a.m. Judah showed up next to my side of the bed, asking for help to get to the potty. Again, I settled him back into his bed. At some point after that, Judah showed up in our room again and this time Michael tucked him into my special recliner chair where Judah slept peacefully the rest of the night.

The older five children spent the night at my folks’ house at a “campout”. They had a wonderful time and they all smell like wood smoke.

While we were all together at my folks, I asked my sister to help get a family photo. This is the first family photo we’ve had since Lilly was born. What a job! It’s always a challenge to get everyone looking in the right direction at the right time and without anyone either making funny faces or bursting into tears. I, for one, am glad we’re done with that project.

Happy Memorial Day!

Early reports are that Judah will get to go home today. His white blood count looks good, so he’s passing the tests necessary to be released.

He will be able to go home on an oral antibiotic rather than an i.v., so that means his pic line (the line in his arm) can be removed.

I asked if his last drain bag can be removed, and the request will be conveyed to the doctor. I’m hoping she says yes!

All the hoops to jump through will probably keep us here until after lunch, so I’m settling in for one last relaxing morning here at the hospital.

Update: 11:00 a.m.

Dr. Stanfill came in and gave us our morning report. She said that Judah’s blood test showed a zero white count (I hope I’m repeated that correctly.), which means the infection is all gone. Also he’s eating and drinking enough, so he can go home with oral antibiotics. Both of these bits of information were already told us before.

She said that he is going to go home with his drain, but that in 2-3 days he will come back to Peoria to have the drain removed. We will need to empty his drain bag at home and keep track of its output. We will also need to take his temperature twice a day and make sure he’s doing ok. Dr. Stanfill said that most likely Judah will do just fine until his 6-8 week return date for laparoscopic surgery to remove his appendix. It is an outpatient procedure and very easy to do. (For those of you made of stiffer stuff, you can see a video of the procedure here on this page. Just scroll down to the appendectomy.)

Judah is allowed to eat and act like a normal kid for the next month or two while he waits for his surgery. However, if he should take any sort of an odd turn that concerns us in any way, we are to call the doctor immediately. It is possible for a child to have a relapse of appendicitis. So we will keep a watchful eye on him. If he can make it to the laparoscopic surgery, it will be a very easy procedure and he’ll get to come home that same day. However, if he has a relapse and has to have surgery on an inflamed appendix, it’s much more invasive and the recovery is longer and more difficult.

So now, as we finish this part of our journey, we are looking to the next thing in our lives: moving out of our house. Most likely we’ll move back to our house on Monroe. But maybe God will continue to stir things up in our lives and surprise us with the sale of our house, which will then mean we will have some house shopping to do. Thank you all for walking with us on this journey! You make it so much easier to bear by carrying part of the load with us.

Update: 2:00 p.m.

Michael will be here in a few minutes to take Judah and me home. Judah says he doesn’t want to go home. He wants to stay here where there is a play room. Silly boy!

Hey, it’s Christie here again.  I always enjoy reading Michael’s posts on the blog.  He’s such a good writer, don’t you think?

I’m back on duty now, here at St. Francis, until tomorrow night at this time, unless we go home sooner than that.

Judah had a pretty good day, but he did lose the entire contents of his stomach at one point.  We don’t know exactly what that means for him regarding his discharge date.  I’ll find out what the doctor says in the morning.  We are mentally prepared to stay longer if necessary, but looking forward to the idea of going home tomorrow if it works out.

Today my mother gave me a few “treasures” she picked up at a garage sale for Judah.  And I found a couple of treasures to give to Judah while Isaac and I were out running errands.  So he is having fun with his new toys.

After a great night last, and a pleasant visit from the doctors this morning, Judah and I went down to the play room to hang out and have fun. While we were down there playing with the cars that you shake to start and shake some more to make them go, the doctors came back to us and said “how would you like to go home tomorrow?” She went on to explain that they will stop the IV nutrition today to see if he can eat enough on his own to maintain the proper blood levels. They will check tomorrow morning to see where the levels are and hopefully send us home. Hooray! Woo Hoo! Hallelujah!

I explained to Judah that we might get to go home tomorrow, and he said that he wanted to stay here. I told him the his family really wanted to have him home, but he replied “I want to stay where there’s a play room.”

To celebrate, we went by the food pantry here and picked up some ice cream to eat. When we got back to our room, Judah decided he was tired of the bed and that he wanted to sit in my chair to eat his ice cream and watch TV.

So our goal for today, is to make sure Judah eats plenty of food to in order to prove to the doctors that everything inside is doing what it is supposed to do. If all goes well, we can reunite our family after about 12 days apart.

What’s a father to do when his three year-old son who has been laid up in the hospital for over a week asks for ‘Piece Reeses’? Why, buy that boy some Reese’s Pieces of course! I had to stop and get gas today before heading back to Peoria, so I went inside and purchased three little packs of the candy for Judah.

When I got to the hospital, I showed him the packages he was very happy to see them. I have been promising him that I’d be happy to get him some of his very own Reese’s Pieces candy as soon as the doctor said it was O.K. Well, he’s made such a big deal about it, that it seems that all the nurses on the floor know that he wants the candy, and several have ‘ohhh’ed and ‘ahhhh’ed over them since my arrival today.

Judah is eating, and with the exception of his first meal he seems to know when enough is enough. This is, unless the food is Reese’s Pieces or Teddy Grahams, then he doesn’t seem to register that he’s had a tummy full (he gets that from me I think), so we have to ration them out. He doesn’t complain too much, he’s still thrilled to be able to eat I think.

We even made a short trip down to the play room, and he carried one of the little bags with him, at the sacrifice of some of the toys he like to carry around. I’m certain that he’ll be sleeping with a bag of Reese’s Pieces tonight.

Judah has really enjoyed being allowed to eat. When the nurse came in this morning, Judah was listening to a movie, and he didn’t appreciate being disturbed. He was all set to be as contrary as possible. He was pouting and frowning and scowling. Holly leaned over and looked at Judah and asked cheerfully, “Would you like some jello?” Judah had a very difficult choice to make. Should he stand up for his principles and object to every word uttered by the nurse? Or should he give in to his passionate desire to eat something as heavenly as jello? Finally, through dark eyes, he nodded and said that indeed, he would like jello. She offered him a choice of red or orange jello. Again, Judah was fraught with the agony of wanting so badly to be difficult but not wanting to lose his grasp on the jello.

“Orange”, he finally said.

When the orange jello and apple juice was delivered to Judah, he was so happy. His thoughts of defiance were long gone. He gobbled down the whole cup of jello. Unfortunately, his stomach was quite shocked at this intrusion, so then Judah had to suffer through some tummy cramps. Fortunately he did not lose his jello…but instead endured the cramping with some fussing.

A moment ago Judah’s lunch tray was delivered with a wonderful array of goodies. There’s clear broth soup, frozen slushie juice, red jello and cranberry juice. Judah has sampled each of the yummy things, but this little guy has learned the benefit of moderation, so he hasn’t gobbled quite as quickly as he did this morning.

Having one’s own food tray is an exercise in exploration.

“What’s dis?” he asks, holding up a little sugar packet.

“Oh, that’s sugar.”

I opened the packet for him to explore. He looked at it and tasted it, and then poured it into his bowl of soup broth.

Then later Judah had fun with the two straws on his tray, shredding the paper off of them and making a big mess.

Judah is enjoying one other side benefit of eating real food: he can burp!

In other news, Judah also was able to say goodbye to one of the two drains this morning. I’m glad to report he no longer has a drain coming out his chubby little back side. I don’t know if Judah is aware that the drain is gone or not, but I am. It makes lots of things much easier.  (I saved the piece of the drain that was inside Judah to take home as a souvenir for Isaac.  Isaac originally asked if he could have the appendix that is supposed to come out of Judah, but I don’t think they’ll let us have that. Hopefully he’ll be happy with the drain tube.)

So far no one is giving us a tentative release date, but the staff is starting to use words and phrases that include the word home in them.  That sounds good to me.