He has a lovely bruise on his right hand from the attempt there (somewhat successful, 4mL). They then tried his left arm (only 2mL), and then asked if I minded if they tried to get the rest from his scalp. I was delighted that that was the next suggestion. If he needs to have blood drawn again in the next 2 months in any quantity, I'm going to suggest they try a scalp vein to begin with. (If anyone ends up with a small child with not very much hair who seems to have veins resistant to giving blood, a scalp draw may be the easiest thing for everyone. Something to keep in mind.)
Then there was the urine test. They had a neat little bag with a hole and adhesive around the hole that they put on him, just like the times when he'd been admitted to the hospital. The difference this time was that they didn't bother to dig up a solvent to use on the adhesive during removal. That might have accounted for the amount of screaming I got from him later when I removed the bandage from his arm.
By the time we left the lab, both of us were nervous wrecks. It was the most unpleasant experience I'd had with getting bodily fluids out of any of my children for medical testing (and I've had a few unpleasant ones).
So that was Monday.
On Tuesday, we saw his gastroenterologist again, and she was pleased with his weight gain, and adjusted his medication. (He's getting just a little bit more of the cyproheptadine now, about 8% more than his previous dosage.) We're trying the Prevacid Solutabs. If he gets used to it, it'll be fine. He doesn't like having half a crumbly tablet shoved into his mouth at this point, but I'm sure it beats trying to force him to swallow it whole.... We also got advice on trying to introduce dairy into his diet; the recommendation was, first cream cheese (of all things!), then cottage cheese, then yogurt, then whole milk. The attempt to start with yogurt almost 4 months ago was not successful, but so far the cream cheese is going down and staying down just fine.
On Wednesday we stopped by his pediatrician's office to get an official weight into his chart there. At the rate things are going, he ought to hit 20 lbs. sometime in March, and then we'll be able to turn one of the carseats from facing backward to facing forward. (Yay!) I figure he's going to definitely pass Catherine in the weight department soon, as well.
And yesterday and today were reasonably calm, aside from him bringing up a little something he ate that didn't smell all that appetizing to begin with.
Julia _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
