March 7

2:25pm

We were moved to an ER room around 1am. Just saw the current ER doc working this wing (I guess, no real idea how they’re dividing up the work) and he’s friendly and no-nonsense. He looked over the issues, noted the cough and the shortness of breath, noted that the white blood cell count looks high, and oh, there’s also the 20ish pounds Nathaniel has lost since coming home. (He’s around 125 we hope).

So yeah, an admission for failure to thrive looks imminent.

And in the meantime, they’re going to work on the feeding tube, run a bunch of tests for infections of all shapes and sizes, and see if we can go after whatever it is that’s preventing Nathaniel from healing.

***
5:40am

I’m back home and Nathaniel is as good as admitted. We spoke to the Attending (the doc in charge) who didn’t seem wholly convinced that Nathaniel needed to be brought in until she learned that he’s lost 60ish lbs since October, the last 20 of which were since January. Not a trend that anyone wants to continue.

Because he’s still within the first 6 months of his liver transplant, he’ll be moved to the post-transplant floor as soon as there’s a bed, we assume. That might take a bit, and by “a bit” I mean his record for time in the ER is 63+ hours (and probably higher as I don’t remember exactly.)

Time to sleep and then make a plan for the next few days.

***
6:09pm

Nathaniel’s in an official room on the post-transplant floor (not the ER) and they’ve manage to un-clog his feeding tube, so those are definitely improvements over where we were.

Myka, Mei, and Zoë are all home. They’re all tired from the noise and excitement of being boarded, so we’re having a quiet evening.