Lucas Camilo

The fact that we found out that Lucas likely has a muscle disease during his recent 9-day stay at Children’s kind of overshadowed the reason he was in there in the first place: hyponatremia, or low sodium level.  The doctors vigilantly watched Lucas’s sodium level as slowly came up in the hospital, and continued to monitor him as the sodium remained stable the last few days of his stay.  He went from a record low of 104 the day we brought him in to the ER up to 134 (which is in the normal range) by the time we left.  The docs insisted that we check Lucas’s sodium regularly upon discharge – luckily just twice a week instead of the daily checks they originally ordered.

On Monday morning, therefore, Burke hopped on his bike with a 2 ml vile of Lucas’s blood and braved the snow on the roads to drop it off at a downtown lab… only to have it initially rejected because the code on the prescription was incorrect.  But they eventually took the blood and the next day we found out that his sodium was at a comfortable 138.  Then today we were back at Children’s for a routine appointment with the GI doctor and Lucas gave some more blood.  This time he clocked in at 140, which is still within the normal range, but now on the upper end.  Looks like the heavily salted breast milk is getting the job done, a relief since the last thing we want is to end up back in the hospital again because of hyponatremia…. especially since Lucas continues to do so well at home.  Today he spent much of the day awake, and even looked out the car window and around the parking lot on our trips to and from the doctor’s office (Lucas hates the cold and when we take him out he usually protests by immediately falling asleep).  He was in such a good mood this afternoon that he cracked bigger smiles than usual as we played him bluegrass music and took turns entertaining him with his favorite stuffed animals.