James Home From the Hospital

Sorry I haven't updated for so long--I have been sorta busy--sorta. Well, James was discharged from the Hospital today at 5:30 pm. It is so nice to be home. Thank you all so much for praying. I will give a brief rundown of what happened and what the doctors are telling us.

1. In regard to the g-tube: James got had his g-tube surgery on Monday and everything went really well. He experienced a lot of pain on Monday, but now is doing much much better. It has been so nice to use the g-tube. He is full now all the time and seems to be so much happier. Continue to pray that James continues to eat orally. He ate a large amount through his mouth on Sunday, but has not eaten much orally since. Pray also that he does not get an infection from the g-tube. Over all, we are super thankful that we decided to put the g-tube in.

2. In regard to seizures: They did an hour long EEG to see if James was having seizures. The good news is that the EEG suggested that James is not having any seizures. However, the EEG only tested James' brain activity for the span of an hour. We are going to talk to our neurologist, who is now on vacation, about having a 24 hour long EEG just to make sure that he is having no seizure activity. We have an appointment scheduled with our neurologist on January 15. We are also going to discuss the possibility of taking him off his valium again in order to better detect seizure activity while hooked up to the EEG. We are not yet sure if our neurologist likes this idea or not. They are not sure if James' low heart rate was seizure activity or not at this point. It is still a possibility to them, but they seem to think of it as a super small possibility. They are still concerned the starring spells he has been having while awake--we will be talking to our neurologist about this as well.

3. In regard to his low heart rate: They are not sure what caused James' low heart rate. They all agreed that Kristal and I did the right thing by bringing him to the emergency room. They think his low heart rate could be one of four things:
A. Seizures--I've already discussed this above.
B. Abnormal heart rhythm--We had an EKG to test his heart rhythm etc. The test came back normal, which is good. The cardiologist said that the right side of James' heart seems to be a bit weaker than the left side. They are going to do some more tests this coming Monday to make sure that this is not the cause of his low heart rate. The cardiologist was confident that although the right side of his heart seems to be a bit less strong, it is not so much weaker that it would cause great problems. We are going to be doing the further testing just to make sure. We are thankful that the Cardiologist is going above and beyond just to be safe. The Cardiologist also sent us home with a Holter monitor. The Holter monitor records James' heart activity for a 24 hour period. They put him on it this morning at 9:30 and so we will take it off tomorrow at 9:30 am and send it in the mail back to the doctor. He will read the content of the Holter monitor sometime this or next week. This will provide him helpful information in assessing James' heart.
C. Reflux--All of the doctors have suggested that James' low heart rate could be the result of acid reflux that irritates some nerve in the esophagus which causes the heart to temporarily beat at a lower rate. They are not sure if this is what it is or not, but they all think that it is a good possibility. Kristal and I are not necessarily sold on this possibility, because he has been on acid reflux medicine for a long time now. But anyway, who knows.
D. They are not sure--Ultimately they are not sure why his heart rate was so low. We still have some tests to take to exhaust all of our options.

4. As of right now they seem confident that although James heart rate was abnormally low that there is nothing for us to worry about. We feel satisfied knowing that the Doctors truly are doing everything within reason to find out what is causing his heart to have such a low number of beats per minute.

5. If you read this tonight be praying for Kristal and I, because they have not yet had the chance to change the alarm settings on the monitor that detects his heart beat and oxygen saturation. We are confident that James will be tripping the monitor all night tonight, which means we are stuck with the option of staying up all night or having him go to sleep without the monitor on him--we don't like either option. If James does keep tripping the monitor we will probably just turn it off so we can get some sleep. But we are not sure yet what we will do.

6. The doctors really want us to keep him on the monitor. They suggested that we take him to the emergency room if his heart beat is consistently in the 50 beats per minute range, or if his oxygen saturation goes down. They told us not to worry about his heart being as low as 60 beats per minute so long as his oxygen saturation remains at a high level. Pray that we have no more emergencies with his heart rate.

7. Thank you all so much for praying for Kristal and I. The Lord was very good to us to give us excellent health care. We had excellent doctors and nurses while up at Darthmouth. All of the doctors were compassionate. We were thankful that they all told us that we did the right thing by taking him to the emergency room because of his low heart rate. We are also thankful that the g-tube surgery went well. We are also thankful that we can now continue to keep James nourished even when he doesn't want to eat.

The Lord is so good to us. Hopefully I can write some of the stuff Kristal and I talked about while at the hospital. Each and every trial is a blessing from the Lord. They are not fun, but they are so effective to produce Christ-likeness in us when we let them do their work on us. We love Jesus. Pray that the Lord would continue to draw us closer to Himself. My friends, endure your trials with joy. Don't get masochistic, but endure them knowing that they are useful to draw you close to the infinitely glorious King. Pray for us that we would continue to have a biblical view of suffering no matter how bad times get.