Hospital Admission

Well we had our follow up appointment today to go over Liam's results from his upper endoscopy and we had quite the appointment.  It appears Liam's stomach is getting worse, he has lost over 2 lbs in the last few weeks from his chronic vomiting. The GI doctors suggest a surgery to place a gastrostomy-jejunostomy tube (G-J Tube) which basically is a feeding tube that goes directly into his intestines bypassing his stomach. He will have to be on his feeding pump anywhere from 16-20 hours a day to give him a slow continuous feed.  During his endoscopy they also found something that is compressing his esophagus from the outside, it is squeezing it tight at one spot which could be preventing food to pass through.  They suspect its something called a vascular ring, where a vessel from your heart wraps around the esophagus.

So our plan is as follows: Liam is going to be admitted to the hospital on Monday for his surgery to happen hopefully tuesday if not Thursday. They need to dilate his stoma (make a bigger hole for the new tube) first so as long as that can happen they are aiming for Tuesday.  While we are there they will be doing an MRI of his chest and brain to check out what is causing the compression on his esophagus.  depending on what this shows we will have to see a cardiologist and possible the cardio-thoracic surgeon because fixing a vascular ring is heart surgery. We may have to stay all week at the hospital. We will also be seeing a nutritionist to come up with a new feeding plan for Liam.

I left there today totally overwhelmed (which is difficult to do to me lol) and in a little bit of a daze. I am hoping by the end of the week we will have some answers, hopefully some easy fixes (thinking positive), and a plan in place. As a mother this is never what you want your child to have to go through, I just hope that I am making the right choices for him and that he will be better off for it.

We are going to have to find him a lighter weight backpack for his feeding pump because this one is heavy!