Pancreatitis

This will be short as I am wiped out! I went to sleep shortly after blogging last night. I was sound asleep until Alex woke me at 4:00 this morning complaining of his belly hurting. I assumed it was his new tube and went to ask if he could have something for pain. The pain quickly progressed and even after one dose of pain meds he was miserable. Then he started retching and gagging. I had them page the doctors again. I asked them to run an Amylase and Lipase (blood tests to check his pancreas) as the pain was becoming unbearable. Even after a second dose of pain meds he was writhing, thrashing and crying in the bed. He just kept begging me to help him. His lipase came back to high to quantify and his amylase was also extremely high meaning he has acute pancreatitis once again. For most of the morning we were not able to control his pain or nausea. He was screaming out like I have never seen him. There was talk of sending him to the PICU where we could be more aggressive in pain management. Luckily, we have awesome doctors and pharmacists here who know Alex well and started him on a PCA pump of fentanyl. He is able to push a button every 20 min to get a dose of pain meds. They have also doubled up his nausea medications. After spending most of the day either awake and crying/screaming or sleeping, he woke up around 4 pm and asked for his ds. It was like music to my ears. He is still in some pain. He is pushing the button quite frequently. His heart rate skyrockets everytime he moves in bed, but he is doing SO much better. For a few hours he played ds and watched movies before going back to sleep.  His liver numbers are now the highest we have ever seen in Alex (one is almost 700 and the other just under 400). We have been waiting on ultrasound to see if there is anything we can pick up. Unfortunately it is the weekend so the one US guy is swamped. Alex is also running a low grade temp. There are some changes in his cbc, but the decision for right now is to watch and wait before starting antibiotics. I think that is all of it.

I will continue to update facebook during the day and the blog at night. Thank you again for all the prayers. They were needed (and felt) today!
Ali