Lucas Camilo

Lucas is doing a little bit better today. The big breakthrough is that after refusing to digest any food all weekend long, he finally started taking breast milk again this afternoon. For babies like Lucas with feeding tubes, “taking food” means digesting the milk and moving it beyond the stomach and into the small intestine. Over the weekend, every time the nurses checked to see what was left in his tummy after a feed, they proceeded to pull out every last milliliter of milk that they’d fed through the tube hours before. Since eating has never been a challenge for the little guy, it was disconcerting to see him refusing food, and clearly was a sign that the infection (confirmed to be a UTI) was ailing him. But after taking a half-sized serving of breast milk at noon today with only a little residual when the nurse checked 3 hours later, he went back up to his full milk dosage at 4:00.

Another highlight of the day was the collection of Lucas’s urine specimen. In order to get a sterile sample, the nurse used a catheter. Lucas was cooperative and let nurse Gigi insert the tube in his penis, but he then refused to pee. We stood watching for a while as she massaged his bladder, but he still refused.  So she decided that making him cough would have the desired effect, which she did by suctioning out his lungs.  And sure enough the pee came, shooting the catheter out and nearly hitting Gigi.  (Ok, so maybe he doesn’t quite have the range to hit his nurse yet, but it was still pretty funny, especially since it’s Gigi’s last day on the job.)  Finally she inserted the catheter back in and got the sample she was after.

Lucas continues to sleep a lot as he fights the infection, but he’s enjoyed having Gramma around reading to him. Yesterday his parents were gone for a full 6 hours in the middle of the day, meaning that Susan got to spend some quality time alone with Lucas.  We’re hoping that the milk and antibiotics will have get him back to full strength soon so that he’ll be more active and alert when Susan swings back through Washington DC on Thursday.  He also needs to get strong for his surgery later this week… but more on that tomorrow.