Okay, so maybe NOT a diagnosis

So apparently this supposed bowel infection (called C Diff) does not impact babies under one year of age. This bacteria(?) creates a toxin and babies' bowels don't yet possess some sort of binding property that would enable the toxin to do damage. So that's not what's causing his issues.

Micah actually got a four-for-one in the operating room today. It was quite a deal, really. 1) Someone from radiology put in a PIC line (he kept blowing IV's, and we don't know if he's going to be able to tolerate feeds so he *might* end up needing nutrition through that route... I'm glad to lose his other IV because after blowing another IV yesterday, they had to put one in a vein on the top of his head... I'll post a pic after I get home since I can't do pics at the hospital). 2) GI did an endoscopy (EGD) and took a camera all the way to his jejunum (2nd part of the small bowel) and biopsied his colon as well. 3) His surgeon was there to investigate improvement in his duodenum. 4) An ENT (ears, nose, throat) doctor cleaned out his ears and checked for fluid (he would have put in tubes if Micah had needed them... Micah had lots of wax, but no fluid).

So there's good news and bad news. The good news is that they didn't find anything wrong. The bad news is that they didn't find anything wrong, so there's nothing to treat.

Tomorrow Micah will get and upper and lower GI study. They will inject barium into his tube and take x-rays for about 12 hours to see how long it takes for the fluid to make its way through his system. This will check for areas that might have slowed down significantly. I'm still not sure what they would do, if anything, if they find a slow spot.

It's completely possible that Micah has some sort of virus going through his system and will take another week to work its way out. Once they get the results from the biopsies, if all looks good with them, they will cease his antibiotics, increase his feeding through his tube (he's only getting 3 hours tonight... should have been 6... but somehow that didn't get communicated to his nurse... imagine my surprise when I returned from dinner to find that Micah was still not getting food), and likely send us home whenever Micah gets to full feeds.

There are some things I still don't understand. Does green bile in his stomach really not concern the GI doctors? They say it happens. Okay, I've checked the fluid in Micah's stomach five times a day for the past, oh, four months or so, and it's always been medium yellow in color. I've seen it go from dark yellow to brown to green this week. Call me crazy, but back in January after he had his duodenal atresia surgery, we weren't allowed to feed him until the green stuff was no longer present in his stomach.

I'll update more tomorrow. And sorry... I'm exhausted, so no little fun fact about Down syndrome today.