Well... M ended up being discharged from the hospital twice in 24 hours, but it looks like he is really home this time.

M was discharged Saturday about noon from our local hospital's inpatient children's unit (it's a satellite of our main Children's Hospital). He had been doing well that morning, and it seemed like he was getting back to normal so they sent us home. Unfortunately we weren't home 5 minutes before he started having trouble again... by bedtime he was as sick as he'd been in the hospital and I could hear no bowel sounds (yes, I've had to learn a little more amateur nursing!). I talked to the doctor who'd just discharged him and she thought (as did M's pdoc) that he might have been discharged too soon and I needed to bring him back to the ER at the main Children's Hospital first thing in the morning, so a GI specialist would be available to see him.

By this morning I could hear bowel sounds again, and M seemed better, but I took him to the ER anyway... There was no way I wanted to take a chance with staying home when two docs felt he needed to be seen again.

He was checked over again at the main hospital ER, and things seem to (finally) be working again. They put him on a very restricted diet for the next two days (nothing but carbs... no fats, meats, fresh fruit or veggies, and very little dairy), and if he does well we can slowly, over the next couple of weeks, start reintroducing foods that are more difficult to digest. He was discharged from the main hospital ER almost exactly 24 hours after he was discharged the first time.

It's soooooo good to be home again... It was a nightmare of a week, and I'm very happy to put it behind us. (In addition to the crisis with M, the engine in my beloved Previa self-destructed... This really isn't a good time for me to be running around looking at cars... so for now I'm borrowing B's (dd#2) car.)

Anyway... that's the latest... I do think the crisis is finally over and am hoping life will quickly and easily slip back into what passes for normal around here.