Another milestone made......one step closer....

Caleb had his follow up doctors appointment yesterday to get his stitches out. Some of the skin had grown over the stitches and they had to dig them out. Our little brave one did it all without medication. Mommy was not happy the way the doctor wanted to do it, but it had to be done that way. His lower back has healed beautifully, but as you can see his upper back has not healed completely with an open wound still there. It is healing though from the inside out, great. But we now have to watch it. We have to pack it with gauze every day and cover it while it is healing. His last day of antibiotics is today. What that means is, we now monitor him with blood tests every week to make sure his CRP level doesn't go up. There is always a chance with that, because the staph infection could just be suppressed by the antibiotics and will flare up when there is no more coming in. He is however still on one antibiotic orally for another week. The one he is finished with is his IV one. No more getting up at 5am, yeah for all of us. Thank you all for your prayers and support. We greatly appreciate all of it. God Bless.

Feeling Alot Better!

Caleb getting his afternoon medicine. He is feeling alot better. We kinda don't need to return to the hospital, due to the fact you can see his room is one....Back is slowly healing. And we have more blood tests to do tomorrow. Hopefully his CRP level remains low. As you can see what an angel this little guy is. The Lord is certainly watching over him. He is very, very tough. Thank you all for your prayers.

Back Home For Now.......

Phewww....Didn't have to get admitted. We went to the doctors last Thursday to go back into the hospital. Caleb's doctor and I had a long talk about "re-opening" him. We both agreed that we should wait another blood test or two. Since his level was so high and then actually went down, sort of, on Thursday, we want to see a upward trend of 5 or so blood test in a row. This time it was only 3 blood tests. As we stand now his CRP level on Friday was 1.9, and on Monday it was 2.4. Now that is still low, not to cause alarm because it went higher on Monday. It is just not the scare we received last week when it rose to 12.7. Now we are going back down to blood tests every Friday. Only once a week now, not every three days. Caleb is doing well, sleeps a lot and the same two places where the drainage is coming out the first time, has not healed fully. Which it should have. We are watching closely. Stitches still in his back. They have to come out soon. But his skin has grown over them and the doctor will have to dig them out, but we are waiting due to the pain he is still in. He is still on liquid morphine, (I could use a straw in that bottle ha ha), and Valium. He truckin along, the little trooper. He is the bravest person I know. I throw out my back and then cough and I am in pain, I can't imagine what he feels. Every time he sneezes or coughs he cries. It is so sad. Thank you for all the prayers and checking in to see how he is doing. We really do appreciate all that everyone is doing for him and us.

Back to hospital....

We have just been informed that Caleb will be returning to the hospital. We are being admitted again tomorrow.

Alyssa and friends for Girls League Dance. It is the formal verison of Sadie Hawkins

Alyssa and her boyfriend Patrick for the Girls League Dance

Fishing with Grandpa at Mt. Baldy Ponds, you catch a fish every 5 seconds.

Shana, Zoe, niece Sophia, niece Kaya at Alyssa's Sweet Sixteen

Lacey and best friend at Alyssa's Sweet Sixteen

Erik and Alyssa, Father/Daughter Dance at Alyssa'a Sweet 16

Alyssa and Carson in front of their cake they designed themselves, and actually got published in the Inland Valley Daily Bulliten newspaper. There, now I think I have updated everyone. Now I see how this blogging works. Thanks for tuning in. I think now everything will be up to date.

Zoe and Friends....

Since I am just learning this blog stuff, I just thought I would post some recent photos of the kids just so everyone can see what's been going on....

Grandpa's 91st B-Day

Happy Birthday Grandpa Earl!!! Grandpa Earl turned 91 on April 8th. He requested prime rib, roasted potatoes, grilled asparagus, and banana cake. We went to get all the items the day before and mom came over at noon to help cook all the goodies. At 3:00pm Papa informed us that he is going to bed. Uh, no! We made him stay up, how dare us, but we made it till cake time.

Complete closure.....finally!!!!!

All closed for now. Caleb remained in the hospital after he was closed up for another 3 weeks. He came home on April 3rd. The reason he came home was not because he was completely healed, it was because everything they were doing in the hospital we could be doing at home. He came home a PICC line, which enables us to give him his antibiotics at home. His CRP levels were continually dropping at the hospital, which was another good sign that he was recovering. A normal level is .6 or .06 can't remember, but at that time he was a 1.9. Well we were home a week, and the nursing agency comes every Friday to draw blood. She came last Friday and his levels rose to 3.5. Which was ok, due to the fact he had a fever. However the doctor was concerned so he ordered another test for the following Tuesday. That was yesterday. The levels came back at 12.7. That is not good. So today we are waiting to hear back from the doctor to see if he is going to have to go back to the hospital and get opened again. Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. I will update you later today to let you know where Caleb and I will be residing. I am still learning this blog thing so "bear" with me thorugh all my mistakes, thanks....Since I am always by Caleb's side and working on this computer, I am learning about blogs, facebook, and twitter. If you haven't...twitting is very cool. We can all stay connected. Get on it and start twitting.

Next wound vac change.....

After having the wound vac in for many weeks, the doctor felt it was safe enough to close him up. After the closure some leakage remained at his lower back. They then put another wound vac on top of the closure to suck out anymore leakage. The vac kept getting clogged because the doctor put in antibiotic "beads" for slow release of meds to help with the infection. The rash you see is from him developing a yeast infection that was crawling up into the wound. Another thing we had to deal with.

Wound Vac

This is the wound vac that is attached to his back to get all the infection out.....

Infection....

This is Caleb after surgery to open his back to drain and irrigate the site. After having his back open for a month, they were finally able to find out what the infection was. He has "Staph Epi". A staph infection that adhears to metal in the body. He will always have it, it could flare up at anytime down the road. He also has a VNS in his chest and a metal plate in his hip. Those sites could also flare up with the staph. If that is the case he could be back in the hospital at anytime.

Original surgery January 2009

Caleb had surgery done in Jan. 2009 to correct his scoliosis. He had a surgery called a spinal infusion. Where they put rods into your spine to correct the curvature. His was at at 75 degree curvature.

Caleb Home From Hospital....For Now

Caleb after wound vac change