My Country Boys

I snuck the boys out early Sunday morning.  It is the only day I feel totally brave and confident enough to drive and park in downtown Vancouver.  Adam has a thing for heights now and he wanted to check out the Vancouver Lookout.  We arrived about 10 minutes early so my small town boys entertained themselves on the escalator. 

 Ari got weak in the knees when he was on the elevator and he wouldn't stand by the doors.  He was horrified when one of the staff told him to check out the inch gap between the elevator and the floor.
And yet, he asked if he could climb up onto the glass…… and was disappointed when I said no.

 Even though the morning was very foggy, it was a beautiful sight.  We were planning on returning that night so we could see all the lights but after a long and rough afternoon at the hospital, I sent them off for a sleepover with their cousins.  They had a great night, got very little sleep and they gave their aunty and grandma a very noisy and interrupted night of sleep and a very early wake up call.

So it is not a stint that they left in Joel's leg, it is a sheath.  I get so confused when the doctor uses words like shaft, stint, sheath, shunt in the same sentence….. and I have no idea what they are all used for.  It took me a few days but now I have it straight…….. I think.
On Sunday morning Joel went for another ultrasound scan and it showed that a 6 inch clot had returned.  They changed the medication that they were putting into the sheath and planned another scan for in the afternoon.  That scan showed that the medication was ineffective so they used a stronger medication along with the drill and cleaned out his vein once more.  Joel started to bleed during the procedure but in the end everything was okay.  The doctor said that his veins all looked perfect, no damage and that there was very good blood flow thru them all.  He was unsure of how many times they would be able to repeat this process as the medication and the bleeding it causes could be a problem.
Joel had another scan scheduled for Monday morning but it didn't happen until the afternoon.  It showed that clots were forming again in three different places but there was still adequate blood flow thru the vein.  His medication was changed again.  When Joel had the blood clot in the summer he was on 50 units of heparin twice a day and then it was dropped to 40 units.  This time they put him on 100 units but now they have upped it to 250 units.
Joel's blood is working very hard to coagulate and no one knows why. The good news is that the fever seems to be gone now.  The pain is also much better and the swelling in his leg is slowly going down.  Yesterday Joel only had one dose of morphine for pain, previous days he was getting 10mg every 4 hours along with tylenol and that was not enough.
Joel is having another scan done right now.  The doctor said that there would likely be more clotting and if so, they will go in and clean it all out again later today.
Joel really wants to have the sheath taken out of his leg and to be able to return to Children's Hospital.  VGH has been great but there is just something very special about Children's.  I didn't take any pictures of Joel this time, didn't think he wanted me to.  Grant calls him a Borg(? something off of Star Trek?)  cause he has so many tubes and wires coming off of him.  More good news, he started eating a bit today.  I think it has been over a week since he has eaten anything and before that he wasn't eating much.