Happy New Year!

It's been a bit of a rough week since Christmas. The day after Christmas Alan started vomitting. We tried to help by giving him Aloxi, but since he didn't have any nausea, it didn't have much effect. It was more like the rapid onset vomitting that happened earlier in the fall. Doc B had surmised they were caused by spasms in his gut and after we started giving him Levsin, they had pretty much disappeared.

Since we aren't taking Alan into the office for regular visits any more, Doc M2 has taken over the lead in Alan's day to day treatment and he came to visit a few times over the last week. We went over all the reasons that Alan might be vomitting (nausea, blockage, stomach bug) and none of them seemed to fit. He wasn't acting nauseous - immediately before and after vomitting he looked completely normal. He had no fever or cough or any other indication that this was a garden-variety flu or bug. His stomach was still soft and his CT last month show no signs of intestinal blockage. However, we haven't seen any bowel movements during this period either. After a couple of days of this, he went from heaving up the yellow and yellow/green bile to a dark brown that was indicating blood. Doc M2 is speculating that intestinal spasms are causing the vomitting and that the frequent vomitting has been tearing up Alan's esophagus.

We've gone to two doses of Levsin a day and Doc M2 added Protonix to ease the stomach spasms and irritation in his esophagus. We have also opened up his G-tube to vent. We noticed an improvement right away with these changes. He's not as feisty and active as we are used to, but he's still getting Benedryl every eight hours with the antibiotics which may account for a lot of drowsiness. The important thing is that his vomitting is significantly diminished and the vomit is now clear or white instead of yellow or brown. Still no sign of an appreciable bowel movement, but if he is otherwise comfortable, we can live with that.

One of our goals with Alan's pain management was to get him to the New Year's Eve fireworks show at SeaWorld. Because of his discomfort this last week we decided to scale down our plans. The wonderful friends from Judy's yoga class who had already given us the gift of some amazing memories arranged a private display of fireworks at the nearby home of the Kobell's, handily situated in the unincorporated county where fireworks are permitted. Because of the rain last night we decided to postpone the show so tonight, Alan got to see fireworks for the first time. The boys loved the display and Alan had a great time calling out all the different colours. Every time Ken would light one of the fireworks and run away, Alan would call out "Try again!" . It was the first time that Alan had been out of his room for a week and he enjoyed the evening.

We were so thankful to be able to welcome 2013 with Alan and Kevin. Thank you all for your support throughout 2012! Happy New Year!


New Year's Eve


Alan waits for the fireworks with a glow stick


The finale