After 40 days in the hospital (surprisingly not his longest hospital stay), we are excited to be able to say Clay was discharged this afternoon! His liver is doing great, but we are still having some issues with keeping food down through his g tube. The good news is the infected abscess has less fluid showing on an ultrasound than his last check, so it’s probably not that. Hopefully once we get him off antibiotics and up and moving more, the GI issues will start to go away. In the mean time, he has a feeding tube through his nose called a NJ tube. Basically it bypasses the stomach and feeds to the small intestine. It’s a temporary measure that allows us to feed him, but not throw up half his milk. The bad part is since the intestines do not expand like the stomach, it’s a longer, slower feed, so he’s hooked up longer than any of us would like, but hopefully this is a temporary solution to a temporary problem.
We will stay in Pittsburgh for a little while longer while he has twice a week labs at the clinic to make sure the liver continues to do great. Eventually, it will become once a week, then every other week, then we will be able to take him all the way home. But we are excited to get him out of the hospital and up and moving and working more than we could there. I am also excited to sleep in a real bed during the week for the first time since January.
For now, Clay is hooked up to his feeding pump and taking a well deserved nap.
