Monday's Update

A few things are going on with Nathan. First, he had to have his PICC line removed today. He developed a rash under the dressing a little over a week ago and it got really bad. Last night it was oozing and overnight they even had to change the dressing. This afternoon he starting complaining about it a lot, saying, "owie" over and over. They finally took it out which is both good and bad. Not having it there will give the skin a chance to heal but now he had to have two IV's placed.

A second thing is that we noticed he is having a bad reaction to one of the antibiotics he is on. It makes him really fidgety and his behavior is erratic. We barely noticed it at first because he was also on Benadryl which makes him sleepy. But last night he woke up all night long and this evening it was very apparent that he was not acting normal. I neglected to mention in my last post that he developed another rash over most of his torso last week that progressively got worse. While in the hospital they took him off the antibiotic that he was taking at home along with his anti-seizure medicine and it cleared up well. They don't know which of the two medicines are responsible for the rash but he needs both of them so I am not sure how they will proceed. That is the reason he is on a different antibiotic, the one causing this behavioral reaction.

Thankfully, Nathan has had no additional strokes since yesterday afternoon. He had an ultrasound of his extremities to check for the clotting source. He also had an EEG to check his brain activity. We haven't gotten the results of either of these tests yet.

One thing I will mention is that I am very worried about Nathan's emotional well-being. I ask that you pray for him. He doesn't have the vocabulary to express his feelings and I can't imagine how difficult that must be. Richard and I have noticed signs of regression. I don't even know if he trusts us. From his perspective, given all he's gone through, I don't think I would blame him. In his mind all we've done as his parents is to take him to one painful experience after another. He doesn't understand that we are just trying to get him better. He doesn't know how sick he is or what this all means. For any child this is a lot to handle, but more so I think for someone who's just experienced the biggest transition of their lives - being adopted by strangers into a foreign country. We try to comfort him as much as we can but there's only so much we can do.

Finally, we learned today that it might take a year to get better from his abscess and be in a position to have heart surgery. I haven't spoken with the cardiologist yet but I am worried that is too far off. Ultimately, his heart is the reason he is having these other issues.

Thanks for praying. We are so grateful!