Overall it was a fantastic day, minus a few bumps in the road.
Our doc says Zay is developing very well. She was very impressed by his sign language and his personality! He seemed to know how to turn on the charm around her and then later decided to have a meltdown in front of his dietician. No worries though, it was quickly resolved with a little snack!
Checking the patient room out... 
Better check out the computer...they were showing my stats on here!
"What's this do?" 
"Another pretzle please, Dad." Have you ever wondered how they take a urine sample from a 15 month old, who isn’t potty trained? I know this is an odd thing to think about, but we encountered this yesterday. One of the first things the nurse tells us is that they will need to put a ‘urine bag’ on Zay. …….Como-say-what? My mind immediately thinks they are putting in a catheter. Oh my, not ready for that one! It seriously had never crossed my mind what they have to do for infants/toddlers to get a urine sample. Well, what our friendly nurse was referring to was not a catheter, rather a simple little urine bag. A bag that literally adheres to Zay’s skin to catch his little tinkle. Oh man, what a weird way to start our visit. Thankfully, our little man did just what we asked of him and it was a relatively short amount of time that he had to have his ‘urine bag’ attached to him. Although the removal process made all of us squirm! Ouch! …..once again, I just know my son will love me some day for talking about this. Ha…at least I didn’t take a picture! ;)
After we finished seeing the doctors we headed to the phlebotomist. At this appointment they wanted to do his full blood workup, like what we had done when he was just a wee little boy…6 days old to be exact. We are never excited to have Zay’s blood drawn, probably because of that very first visit to IC, which took over 3 hours, a team of nurses + an EMT + a NICU nurse who finally was able to get a vein…in the top of Zay’s head. Eeek! Please don’t take us through that again! We are the parents that are pretty well experienced with the difference procedures they are going to do on our little boy.
We’ve learned from all our doctor visits, therefore, we probably come across as a little defensive or over-protective…but when you’ve watched your child go through the things we have – you start making some of the calls yourself. So, after two ‘pokes’ and A LOT of digging, pushing, nudging, prodding, crying, sweating, sobbing and eventually ‘blowing’ a vein 20 minutes later. Shane asks the two phlebotomist to either call a NICU nurse or call our PKU Doctor (She had told us previously if they had any trouble we could page her). So, they opted to call our doctor back. She advised we should just wait until our next visit and try again, because Zay had been through enough for one day. Phew…a relief. Until I realize that Zay’s Thyroid specialist requested we get his blood drawn next week…we were going to just have them pull enough blood with this draw and do everything at once. But looks like we will head back to the lab on Monday and try it all again…
A picture of one of my bandages Thankfully, this wasn’t the end of our day! Zay’s appointment was early enough in the afternoon, we decided to run over to Williamsburg and hit up the outlet mall! It was so fun to have a “family day”, even if it did start out with discussions of a urine bag and an unsuccessful blood draw! I could just see Zay’s eyes light up multiple times, just because he was hanging out with his mom and dad. Oh the joy! Another moment to treasure!
Love, love, love my daddy! 
1 comment:
Glad Isaiah is doing so well! I remember when I first learned about the urine bag, lol. I know those blood draws can be hard to watch for us parents and hard for the little ones having to endure the sticks. I hope it goes better for you next time. I enjoy reading about all your updates!
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