I am Amazed!

Simply floored! Little Man did super well today. He drank 12 oz of that horrible contrast and didn't need the ng tube after all. If you had asked me to bet, I would not have bet in that direction. But there, he did it. We threatened, cajoled and a kid in the waiting room helped me bribe Little Man into drinking it. (The kid in the waiting room told Little Man he couldn't have a turn with the video game until he drank it all. It worked!) What should have taken less than half an hour ended up taking more than four. Seems as though my boy just doesn't like to do things the regular way. It was a rather cool test, because it was a live action flourscopy. So as he drank the contrast liquid, you could watch it on the monitor going down. There was a certain amount of holding him down for the first look. The radiologist said that Little Man had an interesting anatomy of his small intestine, which might or might not be a problem, depending on how his large intestine looked. So lucky us! He had to drink more contrast and we got to get a new picture, (mostly xrays, but two more flourscopes) every half hour until 7 pm tonight. After the first one, he didn't need to be held down again and I was really proud of him for that. One thing I noticed today is his level of understanding has increased a great deal since the last time I had to anything like this with him. I was able to tell him, if couldn't hold himself the way they wanted him to, then we would need to hold him down. He said, "no, I can do it" and then he did. I was so impressed. That is a big jump for him. Up until now, I really couldn't get him to understand a concept like that, or to tell him, you need to drink this, or they will put a tube down your nose and have him really understand it. It is a big leap for him with his abstract thinking and I really had given up on him ever getting there. But he did. Wow. Not that he was angelic, he was still Little Man. He scratched me and the tech, called everyone names, spit, hit and was in general a pain in the patootie. But a much smaller pain than he has been in the past. I am so hoping this isn't just a one time, caught him on a good day thing, but instead, a real step forward in maturing. This test is done and once we get his PICC line squared away, he can have his two surgeries. We all survived and I didn't feel like I should start drinking or just take one of his ativan so I wouldn't care anymore. Instead, I felt pretty good and not too stressed when I got home, which is a HUGE difference from the usual. I will take my blessings where I can find them and today was a BIG one!