Updates on Garrett

Garrett's health is never straight forward and his post-surgical recovery has been no different. After his June bowel reconnection, he had a few great weeks, but after contracting a virus, then another virus and having additional IBD related issues, Garrett is now hospitalized.  Garrett had been struggling for a few weeks and on Friday I took him for an outpatient appointment for fluids and iron. We left the appointment, but his doctor called while we were still in the parking lot and told us to come back into the hospital as more of Garrett's blood work had come in and she felt it was unsafe for him to go home.  He was pretty upset to be admitted and get another IV after just having one removed. After (another!) Covid test, he was admitted.  In addition to dehydration and anemia, Garrett has been experiencing pain. An MRI showed abscesses. Due to their size and location, surgery and interventional radiology want to take a wait and see approach. Short term,...

  ...without a stay (or two) at CHOP. Sadly, Garrett was admitted on Friday evening. We saw this coming, as he has really deteriorated over the past two weeks. He’s had a lot of abdominal pain and was going to the bathroom a lot, so he naturally stopped eating and drinking (his defense mechanism when he feels like this).  He’s lost a lot of weight, pretty much all he earned back after the colectomy, and his bloodwork was concerning enough that the Friday afternoon outpatient visit quickly became an inpatient stay. ( Thankfully, we have a nice, spacious single this time. ) We had hoped that he had just caught the stomach virus that Gibson had, and that he would start to bounce back from it, but this has graduated to a larger infection. Last night’s MRI confirmed that he has inflammation around the ileostomy reversal, but more concerning is that there are abscesses. Since the abscesses are small, (≤ 2cm), they moved him from oral to IV antibiotics to see if that reduces them com...