First, the good news. All of his liver numbers are coming back great and everyone who looks at him comments on how great his incision looks. His recovery has gone as expected and from that standpoint, nothing is keeping him in the hospital. Both of his abdominal drains were taken out and his chest tube removing some excess fluids from his lungs was removed as well.

Now, for why we are still here, Clay has caught something that has eluded all the tests the doctors have done so far. He hasn’t been able to keep down any food or meds consistently and he’s puked on almost every nurse who has taken care of him the last couple of days. Chest x-rays do show a small pneumonia in his right lung and one of his urine cultures has shown a small amount of bacteria, but the docs don’t think that is causing the throwing up. It’s also possible he picked up a stomach bug that you or I would kick in a day or two, but those things linger in immune suppressed people like Clay.

 

For now, it’s a game of introducing meds to help with nausea, antibiotics, maintenance fluids, and seeing if we can find a feeding rate that he will tolerate as he gets over whatever is causing his issues. Until then, we will continue to stay in the hospital under the careful eyes of his liver team and all the great nurses on floor 7B. If all goes well, hopefully we can be out of here by the weekend or next week, but Clay will let us know when he’s ready to see our apartment and say goodbye to his new friends here.

 

Overall, he’s been doing great and this is hopefully just one minor setback in his recovery.