12/06/2009 update

This is how Mr. Malachi looked when I got to the hospital today. It was nice to see him SOMEWHAT content and dressed. His poor nose :(

A full length shot:

Another scalp IV:

They currently administer his feeds through an OG tube (goes through mouth into stomach). This machine automatically spreads his total feed over 90 minutes. The last time they had done bolus feeds, he had bad reflux.
The "crying" sad face that makes my heart break every time I see it. To get the full effect, cover the left side of the picture/right side of his face. He says, "Mommy, HELP ME!!"

Well, we're back to recovery mode. Hopefully the next few weeks will be uneventful. Because Malachi won't have much going on the next week or so, I would like to welcome/encourage you to ask any questions that you might have regarding his situation. After I receive a few, I will just put the questions and their answers in a blog post of its own. Feel free to leave a comment or email me directly at marissasharbaugh@gmail.com.

You may have noticed that there haven't been any updates after the last one on the Friday of surgery. I was a mess. They were having problems postoperatively getting his bleeding to stop. They had him tilted on the bed so that the blood could pool in the back of his nose and hopefully clot. After a few hours, the blood was still bubbling up and out of his nose. For a girl who apparently doesn't handle blood well, not good. It was obvious that his sedation and pain medications were wearing off, so the nurse wanted to give him some additional morphine as ordered by the doctor. By this time, his blood pressure had dropped low enough where morphine would not have been a good idea. Fentanyl would be okay though. Because of the time of day and shift change for the doctors and people already having left to go home for the weekend, she couldn't find anyone to write the order. While she tried to locate a physician or a nurse practitioner, I stayed with Malachi. By this time he was FLAILING in pain. His eyes were clenched shut and he was arching is back and waving his arms and legs. He was not bumpered in with blankets or anything, so I was holding him down on the bed with my hand. BUT, his face was all bloody and gross that I couldn't stand to look his direction due to the queasiness of my stomach. It was horrible! Finally, he was given some meds and bumpered in nice and tight, so that he wasn't quite so active as this seemed to only worsen the bleeding.

John and I were able to stay at the Ronald McDonald House for the night so that we could be close in case anything were to happen to him through the night. I was only able to stomach seeing him one more time before I had to lay down and try to fall asleep with my stomach in one giant knot. John, on the other hand, was able to go up a few times during the night to check on him. Once things had settled down the next morning and John and I were able to talk with ENT and cardiology, we decided to spend the rest of our Saturday with Emerson and just called in to talk with Chi's nurse throughout the day.

Today, I was able to spend a few hours at Malachi's bed. John stayed home with a sick Emma (pray that we don't catch anything TOO bad that would prohibit us from seeing Chi). He looked MUCH better and was even wearing clothes like you saw in the above pictures. I spent a little while chatting with one of our regular nurse practitioners. She is getting very protective and territorial over our baby--I love it. Both of Chi's "regulars" love him and are doing everything in their power to see him get better! She is going to try to get a "care conference" set up for later this week so that John and I can meet with some of the doctors from different departments at the same time to make sure that everyone is on the same page and we can kind of see a game plan/agenda for how the rest of his hospitalization is going to pan out (ideally).

That's kind of all I've got for now. Again, feel free to send any and all questions our way!