We were hoping that Anthony would come home today, but this morning, he had a lot of drainage around his J-tube. The drainage looked like formula, so the doctors had to hold his feedings and do a radiology study to check the placement of the tube. It took half the day to get this test booked and done, so there was not enough time to get him up to the volume he needs to be at for discharge. Here is a photo that I grabbed with my camera phone during the radiology exam.
Anthony is lying on his side, the metal in the right of the photo is from his spinal fusion. The dark spot is the dye in his small intestine, which shows that the tube is working well and there is no leakage. By the time he got back to the floor and the feedings were restarted it was 4:00pm.
The surgical team made rounds at 5 pm and said that they want to keep Anthony in the hospital one more night in order to reach a goal of 50cc/hour via the J-tube. They also want to discontinue the TPN, although I would like to continue it a bit longer to be sure he gets enough calories, but the team wants to remove the central line ASAP. No problem, one less trip to the hospital to take out the PICC line.
So, hopefully he will have a good night and will come home tomorrow.
Here is a little something that made me LOL. Looking out the window of Anthony’s room there is a big message in the snow. Most people think the medical students wrote this message in the middle of the night, but no one saw a thing.
