Club Med: Day 11? 12?

No idea what day it is now.  It's been a blur of breathing treatments, antibiotics, PFTs, weight checks, and nagging about eating...not to mention the parade of doctors and nurses and specialists coming and going.  From 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., a steady stream of people are pestering us for measurements and treatments.  The girl across the hall, another CF patient, remarked to one of the nurses that she thought Ben was very funny with his vest treatments.  There's a YouTube video out there somewhere, but I don't know where it is, what it's called, or even the account name.  Pfft.  I'll find it later.

Today Ben had a series of Xrays while swallowing a cup of cherry-flavored (sort of) barium.  He didn't care for it, of course, but he was a great patient and did swallow mouthfuls of the chalky substance when instructed.  The purpose, of course, was to get images of his stomach and intestines to make sure everything looks and functions normally before they do the surgery to install a G-tube.

So what is a G-tube?  Well, boys and girls, a G-tube is an access directly to the stomach through the abdominal wall (as opposed to a nasal-gastric tube, which goes up the nose, down the throat and into the stomach).  Overnight, we can plug him in and slowly drip food into his stomach to help him gain weight while he sleeps.  They've done this thousands of times and there is very little risk, so we decided that we're worn out from begging, threatening and bribing him to eat.  He just can't do more, so we're at the point where this is the next logical step.  It's not permanent, so if, in a year or two, we decide that he can work harder at eating and doesn't need additional feeds, we can have it removed.  Let's hope this is a very temporary thing.  I mean, really...who needs extra work?  Us, apparently.

I started a new weaving project:  I'm making lanyards for my fellow Sounders fans to wear around their necks as season ticket holding devices.  Here you can see the front and the reverse sides of the weaving, both of which are *gorgeous*! The colors are white (obviously), moody blue, and uh...green.  I forget exactly which color green it is.  Either Colony Green, Myrtle Green or Dark Green.  I'll have to look at the labels on the tubes again.  Unfortunately, once you peel the label off to use the thread, the sticky label is all covered in fuzz and won't stick to anything.  Not that it matters, since there's nothing on the tube to stick it to.

We'll probably be here at the hospital for another day or two--we're thinking it'll be Tuesday when we get let loose, and maybe Thursday or Friday before Mr. B can go back to school.  He's not going to be showing off his G-tube to anyone, though--it took a couple days before he freely let the nurses look at his PICC line.  Funny guy.