Apologize

I first want to start by apologizing. I've realized about myself that I have a hard time giving someone bad news when I'm speaking with them face to face. I am so bad at this that I have lead people to believe that Zach is doing better than what he is. I think that part of the reason that I do this is because I'm afraid that if they knew the truth they might regret ever asking.

So here is to being truthful...yesterday (Wednesday) was hard. It started out "normal" for us. On Tuesday our doctor was worried that Zach might be silently aspirating so she had us slow down his feeds to 100 ml/hr. (7 oz bottle would take more than 2 hours to eat) But on Wednesday about 1 hr into his breakfast, I heard him aspirating. (liquid going into the lungs) I immediately stop his breakfast, called hospice at 9 AM, and waited for them to come. Poor Zach was just so uncomfortable. I knew this was bad. It took some phone tag between the on-call nurse and our nurse but she finally arrived at 11:30. She helped me to make sure his ng tube was placed correctly ( I was way too rattled to do it on my own.) Then she began to remove the air in his stomach that she had put there to place the ng. What she found instead was half of the breakfast that Zach had been given 2.5 hours earlier. Not good. Zach's digestive system is starting to shut down. His stomach had been so full that it had begun to overflow into his lungs. As soon as the nurse removed the contents from his stomach he was completely relaxed. It was decided yesterday to move Zach onto pedialyte only. Even on pedialyte it is still taking Zach about 4 hours to absorb 3 ozs.

Craig and I suspect that before the end of June, Zach will be ushered into heaven.

We have been trying to prepare Aaron for this. I would say that yesterday was the first time that he understood that Zach is "broken".