colin&julia.com

I know it sounds crazy but it sounds like he says hello and yellow… listen and vote…

Does he say hello or yellow or neither or both?

Cambridge Room @ House of Blues

We will breath, we will dance, we will celebrate what we have accomplished….

thank you for coming to relieve us Mr. Good

-Mrs. Toke

How about an update…

Well first out of the gate, Parker is doing really well. We are creeping up on him being 8 weeks old this coming Saturday, but the weird thing is, he won’t be 2 months old yet since his birthday is Oct. 27. Weird… sorry of the tangent.

So yeah, he’s doing well. To catch everyone up… a couple Mondays ago, he was released from the hospital after being re-admitted. Parker tolerated his feeds and came home OK that Monday night. In hindsight he was probably suffering from being sick from a virus unrelated from surgery and that’s why he continued to vomit after his surgery and have diarrhea. The attention he received from over that weekend visit probably helped ward off some serious sickness… but unfortunately that wasn’t the case with Julia.

Last Tuesday Julia got very very sick and she had to be admitted to the hospital for dehydration from constant vomiting, a 102 temperature and other unsanitary symptoms. I swear if we didn’t have bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all.

Julia only had to stay in the hospital one day but once home she still was down for the count, leaving me and Parker to fend for ourselves in an attempted to stay bio-hazard and sickness free.

After a few days Julia slowly but surely got back on her feet after getting her ass kicked by what ever she got. Parker hasn’t shown any further ill effects and I have seemed to be able to stay healthy through it all… although I keep waiting for a meteor to land on my head and off me for good.

This last weekend was very uneventful which was sorely needed. This week seems to be a bit better as well, but we take it day by day. Parker is sleeping usually in the evenings from 6 or 8pm until 2 or 4am which is a nice break for Julia and I to catch up on house work and/or sleep. At 4am Parker will usually eat and then go back to sleep for a hours or so. Our day usually begins at about 5 or 6am.

Parker’s still a pretty cranky baby most of the time, but I think you would be cranky too if you spent the first 6 weeks of your life vomiting and in pain. I’m not sure he’s used to trying to be normal yet. We still are trying to learn how much to feed him and sometimes it causes a vicious circle where we don’t feed him enough and then he’s cranky. Then sometimes he eats too much and then pukes, but not like before his surgery mind you. This in-turn makes him cranky and still wanting more food. On average though Parker puts down about 5 ounces at a sitting which is very good.

We want to thank everyone who sent us their positive thoughts and prayers. Every little bit helped, and the notes really helped keep us in a positive track when we were close to throw in the vomit soaked towels.

We are looking forward to getting healthy over the next couple of weeks and then introducing you to Parker come the new year.

The last 9 months have been a very long road, and no amount of time on earth could have prepared us for the obstacles that were set in front of us. We owe a great debt to all those who stood with us during our trials and we can’t wait to share Parker with you!

We are hoping now to set this blog back on the right path with jsut daily updates of our boring lives, and marking mile-stones in Parkers life.

Well we made it home for a couple days, but now we are back at the clinic due to blood in Parkers vomit and stools.

We made it home on Friday and Parker seemed to be doing pretty well, but once Saturday rolled around Parker became pretty cranky. We mostly attribute this to his regulated schedule of eating only 2.5 ounces every 3 hours. Julia tracked down a Dr. and we got permission to up his feeds slowly and doing so up to about 4 ounces seemed to stop his crying for hours on end. In the over night though Parker vomited more than normal which sent up a red for us and we backed his feeding down to about 3 ounces when ever he was hungry.

Later in the morning during a diaper change Parker vomited again but this time it was peppered with blood and a check of his diaper showed something that looked like blood as well.

Once we spoke with the on-call Pediatric Surgeon they wanted us to come back to the Clinic for further observation. Parker’s on limited clear fluids now, and should be getting an x-ray soon. It looks like he’ll be staying over night to receive and Upper-GI in the morning.

Thats all for now… The Tokes

Well we are still in the pedis wing at the clinic but everything has checked out well.  He is up to 4oz of feeds and sleeping much better. I am however realistic  and don’t expect his crabbyness to subside until he is like 3 months old.

We are still trying more reflux meds and hopefully we will find something that works and makes him more comfortable. He is a fighter and a strong little boy, he has undergone so many tests.  I just keep thinking at least he will not remember this.

It’s Thursday morning now and Parker had a pretty good night.  He slept very well through the night feeding every 2 hours. The schedule is a little rough on us adults but it’s worth the positive progress we are seeing with him. As of 8 am we are up to 45 cc’s of Pedialite and will move to a 50/50 formula mixture at noon today! The best news of all is that he hasn’t thrown up once be we are still trying to be conservative with our expectations.

Just a quick update written late Wed. nite… Parker has made it through his surgery and all seems successful. The Dr.’s commented to us in the post-op that his muscle blockage was pretty far along. This revelation from him sorta really push us into reality and made us realize how serious his condition really was and although we were scared before the surgery, we are glad we really didn’t have to focus on that aspect of this whole process until after it was taken care of. Parker’s voice is very horse from his breathing tube but even at his young age I would hazard to say that his spirits are up and positive.

It looks as if we will be able to go home around Saturday. Until then we are on a strict regimented feeding schedule. Parker feeds every 2 hours. We have started with 2 feeds of just 15 cc’s of Pedialite. Once he’s kept that down we then move on to 2 feeds of 15 cc’s of a 50/50 mixture of Pedialite & formula. At the 8 hour mark we then move to the 30 cc level but back to 2 feeds of Pedialite and then 4 hours later 2 feeds of the 50/50 mixture and so on, and so on. So if everything progresses in a positive manner by 2am on Saturday we should be at a full strength formula level at a substantial amount of an ounce plus.

HI everyone,

We just wanted to update everyone and ask for some prayers/positive thoughts for little Parker.

As some of you know, Parker has been having issues with feeding since he was born and we have been in an almost constant battle to find something that he would eat that wouldn’t cause him to vomit or cry because of extreme discomfort. Over the last weekend things became very worse with Parker unable to keep anything in him after any feed. Due to our persistence and knowing that something was gravely wrong with Parker beyond the norm we started to see a Gastro-Intestinal specialist and ended up at Hillcrest Hospital late Monday night. After a new round of tests Monday, some of them repeats from earlier ones, we finally discovered that Parker is suffering from Pyloirc steniosis.

Pyloric steniosis is a condition where the muscle/valve at the base of the stomach that leads into the small intestine is slowly thickening and closing. This explains why Parker has been vomiting all his meals as well as not gaining any weight, etc. If left untreated the stomach closes off from the intestines with fatal consequences.

Luckly for us, we have caught Parker’s condition, which is evidently very common now a day we are told, and he is scheduled for surgery today Wednesday.

After the surgery, Parker will be restarted on a new feeding schedule to see slowly start up his digestive system again. He might also still suffer from severe reflux and food allergies but we have to correct one thing at a time, and we are hopeful that correcting the Stenosis will help make his other conditions lighten or get easier.

Want more info… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyloric_stenosis

Needless to say little Parker’s life has been pretty hard so far.  The surgery is minimal invasive but it is still surgery.  We are at Cleveland Clinic’s main campus and will be here through Thursday or Friday. The Doctor’s and nurses say that he will feel much better and be so much happier after this surgery.

For those of you wondering about Gary… he is still alive and still slowly recovering. He is at the 4 week mark now after getting hit by a car. He has pretty good control of his bladder, as well as his upper digestive track. His lower GI track is still sluggish and he sees a vet every few days to get checked on and cleaned out as needed. His prognosis is pretty good and now he’ll probably to survive, although he will be having his tail docked. We are pretty happy with his progress although with his bladder and bowel issues we may be looking for a safe outdoor place to move him to so he can live out the rest of his days in a more suitable environment matched with his short comings now.

Ok that’s about all from us. Thank you to everyone that has sent us there positive thoughts and prayers, as well as offers to help. Again we should be back at home late this week depending on Parker’s feeding progress after surgery, and Julia would love to have visitors during the day next week to hang and help out.

We’ll send more updates as we can, and as Parker gets out of surgery. Please feel free to send this email along to anyone who might be interested

Love the Tokes.