Crossing our t's and dotting our i's!

 

Mr. Austin has once again stumped the medical teams!  We are still at Children's, fingers crossed Austin will be discharged tomorrow!  Today the events of yesterday became a little clearer and endocrinology was called.  Once in surgery yesterday, Austin's routine nutrition labs were drawn one last time before Dr. Kreykes removed the central line.  The results came back as he was leaving the OR and results were a blood sugar of 22mg/dL.  They did a stat retest and it was 11mg/dL and glucose was given immediately.  Thankfully, he stabilized very quickly.  He was pretty sleepy waking up from the anesthesia and this was also concerning, however, Austin typically does take a little longer than a typical kid his age, but he was being watched so closely.  We finally got to see Austin and although he was sleepy, he knew who we were and he talked to us a little bit!  It was slow, but he improved throughout the evening and by the time we got to his impatient room, he was sitting up and gave me a high five when I asked for one!

Last night was very uneventful, every 2 hours, the nurses turned up his feeding rate and his IV fluids down (which now contained dextrose)!  He tolerated it very well.  Blood sugars remained stable.

This morning we thought we were going home then NOPE, not so fast!  The hospitalist team came in and broke the news they would like to do further studies to try to determine why this happened.  So, here we are, completing a 12 hour "safety" fast.  Austin is being monitored very closely.  We turned his feeds back off around 10am this morning and restarted normal saline (does not contain dextrose) to keep him hydrated.  The frequency of his blood sugar checks is based on his number.  He has gotten poked at least every hour since noon.  Good news is....although he jumped around from mid 50's to 80's, for the most part he stayed within his perimeters.  Austin gets his blood glucose checked every other week with his nutrition labs so we know with certainty his normal is in the 70's.  They wanted him to get down to 45mg/dL, instead the lowest he got was 49mg/DL (right at the 12 hour mark). They went ahead and ordered the blood labs and will give him glucose through his IV.  We should know the outcome of those labs shortly and if they indicate anything we should be aware of or concerned.  Time to feed this boy again....please!

The hospital also got special permission to put him on a continuous monitor that Brian and I have to watch and around 4pm, we put the Dexcon G6 monitor on him.  The monitor checks his blood sugar every 5 minutes and alerts us if he is out of his perimeters (65-150mg/dL). So far the readings haven't matched the Accu chek machine very closely.

More to come...goodnight!

Hugs,
Tara