Aug 25, 2009 Update

Sorry I haven’t sent out an update in a while, I’ve been getting home late and not had much energy.

1. Matt is still in the hospital.
2. His pneumonia is cleared up.
3. His snot and secretions are much better.
4. He is having problems with his intestinal system. When he came into the hospital, he was extremely constipated. They did some testing and some x-rays and then did a barium contrast study. They finally had to give him a colonoscopy prep medicine to get things “moving”. The problem is that a bunch of the barium is still in his intestines and they want to get most of it out before allowing him to start tube feeding. There have been several days of taking the colonoscopy prep medicine followed by x-rays that have yielded some improvement but not enough. As of right now, they gave him an enema and just took another x-ray (that boy is going to glow in the dark!!). We are waiting the results of that x-ray as I write this note.
5. It looks like he is going to have a colonoscopy tomorrow so the GI docs can see what's going on inside of his colon.
6. If they can start feeding and he is able to tolerate it, we can go home in 2 days.
7. If he can’t tolerate feeding through his PEG tube, they are going to put another J tube in. You may recall that he accidentally pulled his J tube out a few weeks ago. If they have to do this, the recovery time for the J tube is about 5 days.
8. Things are in motion to go to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a complete work-up and second opinion on his diagnosis and treatment. The head of the JH neurology department has reviewed his case and referred it to another doctor there for additional review. We should hear something later this week about scheduling the trip there.

Please continue to pray for Matt and our family.

Also, we could REALLY use some visitors!!