In-Between Times: Condition Yellow

In times like these, I live with the uneasy dichotomy of forging ahead like usual, and waiting, expecting, the other shoe to drop.

The Young Prince has been a bit off. Liver is fine, so that's always good. And as a side note, a transplant recipient is always waiting for the other shoe to drop, in terms of rejection. Luckily that has not been an issue for TYP.

But there has been GI problems, frequent loose stools that are appearing with more and more visible blood. A stool study showed negative for most of the usual suspects, like C-diff. It also was positive for blood. No surprise there. A couple days later, his blood labs showed lowered hemoglobin, and lowered crit. All things considered, not really a surprise there either. The numbers were not horrible, but concerning. The team in Boston decided that Tom should come in and be seen in clinic, for more blood work and eyes and hands on assessment. That appointment is tomorrow. 

I have never looked forward to an appointment this much in a long time.

And I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to handle all of this. What does it mean? My mind is leaping ahead to bowel disease. It's actually leaped a little further past that, to darker places that are not as likely, like some kind of cancer.

#*#*#*#*Amendment. Tom has actually been admitted. He had his appointment this morning, and his hematocrit had dropped even lower, so the docs said lets scope him soon as possible. We hoped to put it off for just a teeny bit, just because Tom had some fun things planned for this week. 

The doc would have gone along with a slight delay, but in the end (no pun intended), it made more sense to start with the prep now. Prep meaning taking yucky tasting drinks with laxative powder now, in the hospital, and tomorrow he'll have both an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. They will take biopsies and a good look around.

They suspect colitis.