A "smidge" better

Noah is doing a little better. A very little, but that is ok.  This morning when they measured his belly he was down 2 cm, and he weighed 300g less than yesterday.  That is what we have been waiting for - a sign that things are starting to move in the other direction. His belly is still 76 cm, or 30 inches.  His weight is still 83 pounds, up from 68 on Sunday.  But his liver enzymes are WAY down; for example, there is one that is supposed to be 10-60 and it was over 2400 - now it is down to 740.  That means that his liver is starting to work again, albeit very little.  The pee, however, is not yet flowing in abundance.  But it is coming. They keep telling me it will come.
Today was a very nice day, we had some visitors: Trevor Vanderveen (my 2nd cousin and a pastor of the church we normally attend in Vancouver, and also former Smithereens, Dan and Irene Schat.  It was very nice to see all of them, and to pray together.
He did have a bit of an "incident" later on this afternoon: he got up to pee and then started saying how much his liver hurt, so he got back onto his bed. Meanwhile, the SAT monitor (measures the percentage of oxygen in his blood, or oxygen saturation) started beeping like crazy and his sats went down to 83%, which really isn't all that low, but for some reason, it just wouldn't go back up to where it should be, 92 % or higher.  He also wouldn't move over and sit properly and he was in pain, so he was kind of hyperventilating, and crying, so the nurse had to take the nasal prongs out and use a mask and she also turned his oxygen up to 10 litres before it brought his sats up.  We didn't realize at that point that it was related to pain, so we got pretty freaked out!  She gave him some morphine, and then went to get the Dr, who came very quickly to check him all out.  She ordered a chest X-ray and that the morphine be given every three hours, instead of as needed.  He kept the mask on and managed to get down to 5 litres, but that was up from 3 liters, where he has been for a couple of days.  I became quite worried that this was a setback, but the nurse assured me that it was more of a sidestep than a setback.  We figured out that yes, it was pain related, that as soon as he was comfortable, the o2 went down.
The radiologist brought the X-ray machine right up to Noah's room, which was cool, we didn't have to get the entourage back together, Noah just had to sit up straight in bed.  The results showed a bit more fluid in the left lung.  Rats. The Dr. said that really, he was doing fine, this is just a little blip on his screen, he would get off the mask and tomorrow we would wean him off of some of the o2, back down to 2 litres or less.
This caused a bit of a quandary for us, though, because up until that point, Noah had been doing ok, and was so stable, when RMH called yesterday and asked us if we wanted Box Seats to the football game tonight, we initially said yes.  Tom's mom is here, and she said she was willing to sit with Noah while the rest of the family went to the game.  Now, after this,
A. we didn't want to leave him at all  and
B. Mom didn't really feel comfortable staying with him
But the house had kind of put pressure on us to go (the owner of the box was going to be there, so they wanted the box full, so as not to offend him) and the girls really needed to get out of the hospital and do something fun. Noah wanted one of us to stay, so we decided that one would go with the girls and one of us would stay. Tom had more reservations about leaving Noah than I did - I don't think he really trusted their assessment of the situation- but in the end, Noah convinced him that he should go because he doesn't get to do all the fun stuff like I do.  He agreed, but really only for the girls.  Anyway, in the end it was fun, the girls had a blast and Noah was fine.  Alyson was hoarse from cheering so loudly; apparently she loves football.  Who knew?
While they were gone, the mask drove Noah crazy, so he decided to go back to the prongs, which went fine.  He went down to 4 liters and his sats were 95-97 when I left.  He was awake and negotiating what he could spend his remaining 90mL drinking, orange juice or root beer.  unfortunately, he needed platelets today, so that ate up a lot of his fluids, and later tonight he will have more red blood cells, which will further reduce the amount he can drink by 500 mL.  Man, once those transfusions stop, he will be laughing! He will be able to drink so much, he will be floating!
So we thank God for little things, and big things today, and continue to ask him for Noah's complete recovery.  Thank you for joining us in prayer for our sweet boy.