Home of the Four Trans

After a tumultuous day on Monday after his surgery, Justin is on the road to recovery. I returned to Orange County on Tuesday afternoon while Loi continues to monitor Justin’s progress and keep him company in Los Angeles. Loi calls me with an update almost every hour.

Everyone asks me, “Is Justin doing better? Is he OK?” And, I hesitantly answer, “Yes, he’s doing better. But…” There’s always a “but” because I’m almost afraid to relish in joy in fear of disappointment. There are always brain tests, blood tests, and x-rays to make sure that he’s OK. I tightly wait for the results every time.

According to Loi’s reports, Justin is progressing everyday. The doctors have taken him off the pain medication completely (aside from the usual dose as the nurse feels necessary), his bleeding is minimal, so they took out his chest tube, all his vital signs are improving, and he is practically breathing on his own now. So, by tomorrow he may be off the ventilator.

There are some factors that warrant concern; But, the doctors are monitoring those very closely. He had mucous in his lungs that they had to pound and suck out, he has a bit of a respiratory infection that is being treated with antibiotics, and he hasn’t pooped possibly due to his temporarily damaged liver from all the medication he received following the excessive bleeding debacle. So, while he is recovering, it is slowly.

The highlight of the week, so far, is that he opened his eyes for the first time yesterday. Loi said that he looked like he just woke up from a sleep and looked around as if he did not know where he was. He stared and studied everything around him, including his father. He stayed awake again today for 1.5 hours with Loi.

We also received an official report on his abdomen x-ray that confirms he has complex heterotaxy. This is a condition where his entire gastro-intestinal system is rotated, meaning all his organs are on the wrong side of the body. There is not much that the doctors are going to do about this unless he has problems feeding. My greatest concern is that he does not have spleen as a result of his developing heterotaxy. Not having this organ means that he would be more prone to infections, so he’d have to be on antibiotics for the rest of his life.

But, at this point, we can only live moment to moment, day by day until we can finally take him home. Even then, we do not know what the future holds and can only take it one day at a time, and deal with each battle as it comes.

For now, let’s not forget what we have today…

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 12:09 am and is filed under Justin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.