Thursday, March 18, 2010

Thursday Evening

Today was another big day for Brody.  We started the day excited that Brody would be loosing a few tubes today.  At 5am he had his foley removed and has had no problem going pee pee since it was removed.  After that Brody was taken for another NIBGH scan.  We don't know the results of this scan yet (nor whether his neuroblastoma is intermediate risk or high risk yet).

  At 1:15pm he was taken to have his internal stent placed to unblock his ureter so that urine flow would no longer be occluded from kidney to the bladder.  Unfortunately, his doctors were not able to complete this successfully.  They attempted but  it appears the tumor is still too large for them to place the stent.  So they replaced his nephrostomy tube with a new nephrostomy tube while he was still under the anesthesia (the nephrostomy tubes can only stay in for a max of one month at a time before being replaced).  As the tumor shrinks further they can try again to do the internal stent and eventually remove the nephrostomy tube.

Brody did much better recovering from ansthesia today.  He is breathing well this time and he has not had any fevers today  nor very much pain.   He does still say that his belly hurts any time he needs to pee and his left leg (calf area) hurts whenever he tries to stand up or fully extend or straighten it.  The doctors are not sure what exactly is causing the leg pain.  They think it is his tumor pressing on something in the abdominal area that is giving a referred pain to his leg.  They plan to begin having him work  with a PT to get him using his left leg again. 

Brody has developed an allergic reaction to one of his medications or adhesive tape or hospital laundry detergent.  We are not sure what exactly he is reacting to but are most suspicious of the ceftaxime (anitbiotic) and adhesive tape or both.  Anywhere he has had tape he is very red and itchy but he also has wide spread areas on his back, groin, neck and scalp that were not exposed to the tape. His antibiotic was changed to Bactrim this evening and we are trying to avoid adhesive tape exposure as much as possible.  Hopefully his itchiness and rash will soon improve.  He has orders for atarax by mouth as needed for itching.

Brody is currently eating mashed potatoes, a little bit of banana, and we're working on talking him into a few bites of cheese pizza.  He spent some time this morning playing Go Diego Go Safari Rescue on the Wii and is chilling watching some TV right now in between bites of food.  Brody has not had much of an appetite.  It takes a lot to get him to eat each bite of food.  We welcome any ideas to up his nutrient load/suggestions for disguising some high nutrient foods or products into foods he likes.  Brody loves chocolate milk so we thought we'd try giving him carnation choclate flavored instant breakfast to get some more calories and nutrients into him but he did not like it.  We're open to deas to increase his calories and nutrients into smaller volumes of foods.  Again, thanks to everyone for all of your support to our family during this ordeal. 

2 comments:

  1. How about making a chocolat instant breakfast milkshake. Just enough ice cream to make it cold

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peanut Butter, if he can have it and likes it.

    ReplyDelete

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