Doctors' Appointments, Bloody Stools, and Swollen Surgical Area

On Monday, Grandpa Kenski came over in the morning to hold Henry for a while. Then, we had a doctor's appointment with Dr. Moussa. Henry was sleepy during the car ride, which was about 40 minutes long. Our appointment was at 11:15AM. I tried to get the appointment moved to first thing in the morning because Henry is too fragile to be around a waiting room of sick kids. They said that we could use the side doors because early morning was booked. We got there at 11:15AM. Jeff ran into the office to ask where the side door was. It took them 25 minutes to let us know that Henry could come in through the side. Henry and I waited in the car during those 25 minutes. Then, we stood in a hallway near the side door for another 10-15 minutes. I wasn't exactly thrilled.

Dr. Moussa's nurse obviously was clueless about Henry's situation. She asked me if we were feeding him rice cereal yet...uh, no. Does one normally feed a 5 lb baby rice cereal? Frankly, she should have been able to tell that by looking at him. He's rather petite. And, you don't calculate a preemie's age by their birthday unless you are on crack; you calculate it by what their gestational age is (due date should have been). Developmentally, that's what makes sense. That's what the literature says. Duh. Is it too much to ask that a nurse in a pediatrician's office know these things? The woman handed us a sheet before she got the doctor; it had Henry down as below the third percentile in weight, height, and head circumference. The sheet said that the baby should be looking around and smiling in reaction to environmental cues. Henry does look around quite a bit, but his coordination is still off. We noticed that the sheet was for four months old. Again, you should base a preemie's behavior off of gestational age, not birth date, meaning that she should have given us a sheet based on newborn behavior because in terms of gestational, that's what Henry is, a newborn. He would be 10 days old. So far. Not impressed.

Some good news. Henry was weighed at 5 lbs 3 ozs. He really packed on the weight this weekend. He has been eating, eating, eating.

Dr. Moussa came in. She was concerned about his groin area from the hernia surgery. The concern was that perhaps that intestines had popped out again. A possible situation because his tissue holding in the intestines is like tissue paper. The area has looked swollen. While inspecting him, Henry managed to pee on her. He also had a little bit of stool. She asked us if he had had blood in his stool before. We said no, not to our knowledge. I didn't inspect it thoroughly, but from where I was standing, it just looked brown, nothing unique.

Dr. Moussa stepped out for a few minutes. When she came back, she said that she had arranged for us to see Dr. Cosentino at 1:30PM, so that the surgery area could be inspected. She also said that she had the stool tested. There was blood in it. Could be a dietary allergy. Dairy is the prime suspect. So, I am to eliminate dairy from my diet and see if that helps. Henry's supplement is dairy-based, so we are stopping that for now, which is problematic because he needs the extra calcium. I am rather angry over the blood in stool situation. I had asked about allergies several times in the NICU. My concerns were blown off. When asking about stools, "Oh, that looks normal" was the response. The stool that I saw today looked like stools I'd seen in the NICU. To my knowledge, his stools were not tested for blood. I wonder if a good deal of his feeding intolerances could have been reactions to the milk that I had been drinking.

We visited Dr. Cosentino. The surgical area is swollen, but that's normal. Doesn't look like the hernias have popped back out. Disaster avoided for now. We are to see her again on the 10th of September.

My mom came by in the afternoon to look after Henry while Jeff took a nap and I prepared my lecture for the night. I started teaching tonight. It is a three hour class. Normally, teachers pass out the syllabus on the first day and let everyone go. But considering that one night class equals three day classes, I lectured for a while. I think that the class will be OK. It is a required course that most students hate, but I've gotten high teaching evaluations for it before. There's a long waiting list. Heard a student complaining in the hallway. My policy is that I drop students who don't show up on the first day because we have a very long list of students who want to get in. It is a class that a high percentage of students fail (regardless of who is teaching it; the material is challenging for undergrads). The student was mad that I said if she didn't come to class, I'd give her slot to someone who was attending. The bottom line is that I'm trying to weed the slacker students out (the ones who don't show up until after Labor Day in the fall or after MLK Day in the spring...extending their vacations by two weeks). These student don't do that well anyway. Dropping them saves me the trouble of having to fail them when (surprise, surprise) they don't perform because they aren't really serious about their education.

Being back kind of made me sad. It reminded me of just a few months ago when my biggest concern was preparing my next lecture. Those days seem so blissfully easy in retrospect.

I remember a sunset that Jeff and I watched a day or two before Henry was born. We stood out in the backyard with our dogs. Everything was perfect. The future looked perfect. I miss that feeling.