Power of Scrub Pants

You see these pants? They're magic. It just so happened that I packed them as a last resort because I was grasping at straws finding clean clothes for this adventure. Busy weekend, no clean laundry but clean work clothes kind of situation.
But, I am glad I did. These are universal "surgery" color for hospitals. Other than being really comfortable, they have had the added bonus of giving the silent message to some people, say taking care of my son that normally wouldn't be so helpful, that "I am one of you. Don't give me that lay person song and dance." All without me having to say a word.
Magic pants.
My pants broke down a HUGE barrier with an Ice Queen Receptionist that we've had not so good interactions with in the past. Today, she let me right back to the recovery room to question nurses face to face about where my son was, why its been 5 hours and I haven't been updated. >:-(
Aaaaaand just got another update as I'm typing this. **Magic Pants**

Anyway. They took Weston at 0830 and told me it was going to be approximately 6 hours. I went back to his room and took a nap...plagued with very vivid dreams that I was schizophrenic and was having a psychotic break. Lovely. Maybe it was that they were in real life torturing some kid down the hall, but GOOD. LORD. I can't escape the crazy even in my sleep.
I went outside for the first time since 3am Tuesday morning. And I ran into Ws liver doctor in my rambling. He had just been in the room with him and said everything was going well. The Radiologist found places that were bleeding and was still working at scarring those down. Now, as it was explained to me this is the problem: his portal vein (big, important vein) is occluded for some reason. As a result, his body has formed "collateral" veins to take the place of the portal vein. (Awesome! Way to go!) The location that they have sprung up in is the loop of bowel that was connected to the liver during the Kasai. (Boo! what were you thinking?!) Well, it's high pressure, even though its venous. And these collateral veins, aka varices, aka intestinal hemorrhoids (that one is mine) leak into the bowel thus causing the blood in the poop. This must have been happening for a while and at a much slower rate, bc we haven't seen it reflected in his poop and his hemaglobin has been slowly trending down for some time. We had attributed the low HGB to eating paper as an infant, dirt, outside pizza and sustaining life on milk.
Once they scar this set of collaterals down, new ones will form. THAT'S OK! Ideally, they will form somewhere else other than the intestinal loop and problem solved. Alas, the intestine is a very attractive and sexy place for these varices to form, so there is a chance that they will form in the intestine again and somewhere down the line, he'll have to have intervention again. Which in Weston speak, means "I'll be baaaaack."

So, for now, me and my magic pants wait.

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