Discharged

Sam was discharged from the hospital late this afternoon and seems to be doing well again. He was sleeping peacefully at 9 tonight and will hopefully be back to his normal schedule soon.

His sudden downward turn is still unexplained. He has had similar episodes before and the current theory is still that his oral feedings have something to do with it. He is back to his soy formula, but only a few milliliters a day instead of the few ounces a day he was tolerating before. His direct bilirubin has dropped back down to 6.8 and we will hopefully keep the downward trend going now. His dose of Omegaven was also increased slightly this week and more adjustments were made to his nutrition and replacement fluids before he left the hospital today. The week has taken a toll on Sam and his weight on Monday had dipped to just below nine pounds.

We will be taking a short vacation from any benefit work and journal entries until early next week. Sam's uncle Todd will be getting married on Saturday so the next few days will be very busy for Jason and Ryan as they are both in the wedding. When we were first planning our trip to Boston we thought that Sam would be back for the wedding, but we were delayed in starting treatment so Deb and Sam will have to miss the wedding.

We have added a copy of Sam's benefit poster to his homepage. We will be adding more details on the website soon. Thank You to everyone who has been involved in the planning and preparation for the benefit, and all of the individuals and businesses that have made contributions. We will be adding a page to our site soon to recognize everyone’s generosity.

For those of you reading this at School Specialty: Please encourage your immediate supervisor to volunteer to sit in the dunk dank at the benefit. How many of you wouldn't enjoy dunking your boss? It will be September and chances are that it will not be warm outside, of course this is Wisconsin - it could be 90 degrees that day, but that will not diminish the enjoyment you will receive.