All of Jacob's great progress kind of screeched to a halt this week. He has had a cough for about a week, but no big deal, just a cold right? Sunday night the cough become a really powerful barking cough, and he was really fussy. He wouldn't sleep, and he stopped eating. Monday morning I was going to take him to the doctor, but they weren't open because of Christmas, so I ended up taking him to the ER. They said it was just a respiratory virus, and that I should just put what he would take in the bottles down his feeding tube. Sunday night he started vomiting, so I had to completely stop his feeds. He breathing was labored, and the right side of his neck was also a little swollen so I took him back to the ER. Because of Jacob's history the Dr called down to Primary Children's and they decided to send him down by ambulance. I ran home and got Jeremiah (it was about 2am) and we followed the ambulance down. By the time we got to Primary Children's Jacob's neck was so swollen that he was almost unrecognizable. Long story short, they did an ultrasound of his neck and he has a blood clot where his PICC (long term IV) ends. It was causing blood to back up and fluid to collect in his neck and face. They have removed the PICC and the swelling has gotten a lot better. Unfortunately, they had to put Jacob on blood thinners so that the clot doesn't get bigger, and his body can break it down slowly.
It turns out Jacob's respiratory virus is RSV or another virus that does the same thing. He is pretty miserable. He has been having pretty high fevers and still won't eat. We were able to restart the continuous feeds without any vomiting though, thank goodness.
I'm not really sure how long he will be in the hospital this time. The Dr's really don't want to put in another PICC because he has had so many problems with them, so they are trying to increase his feeds enough that he won't need TPN anymore. Increasing his feeds quickly has never worked before, but he has done alright with it the last two days, so maybe it will work. Hopefully it won't take too long. I'm really not excited about being here again, and would love to go home.