We are HOME!!

I don't think I've ever been more glad to be home in my life! Spending 6 days at the hospital is NOT fun! Ryan was released from captivity (the hospital) today at 1:30 pm. He had a HIDA scan today, to check the gall bladder, and they said it was normal. They did a Hepatitis panel to check for 5 different strains and they were all negative. They also checked for mono, meningitis, west nile virus, pretty much anything they could possibly think of that even MIGHT be similar to his symptoms. Dr. Pendleton came in this morning and told us that his liver enzymes were finally on their way back towards normal, one was at normal and the other two were about 3 times normal still but on the way down. The markers for inflammation they were watching had finally peaked and were heading down so as long as it was OK with Dr. Cobb and the HIDA scan was normal he said we could go home today. The HIDA scan took about 1.5 hours and he was done with that about 10:30 this morning. By noon Dr. Cobb was in saying everything was good with the gall bladder. They never have heard back from the state on the sub-strain for Salmonella and he will continue to watch for that. He basically said if the state already has a strain on file that this one matches they will let them know. If not they will send it to the CDC (center for disease control, I believe) in Atlanta, Georgia and then it will be weeks or months, if ever, that they will hear back from them. Dr. Cobb says it still doesn't all make since. The problems he had did not all fit with Salmonella so he is thinking he possibly just had two separate issues going on at the same time and they just never really figured out the other issue, but he really doesn't know. He will keep him on the antibiotic for another 10 days. We have to go in next week and have more blood work done (poor Ry has so many holes poked in him that we can't even possibly count all of them). They will just make sure everything is staying in the normal range. There we a couple of viral tests that they didn't have results on yet but they said even if they were positive it wasn't anything they would treat and it would just get better on it's own. So he knows a whole lot about what he doesn't have, he knows there are no tumors from his waist up because it has all been scanned, poked, prodded and tested in about every way possible. He knows he doesn't have mono, meningitis, west nile virus, any type of hepatitis, and who knows what else fits into all the tests they ran. As far as how he is feeling. He feels pretty good. He's still very tired! His back is pretty stiff from were seeing about 10 different holes in his spine where they did the spinal taps and the blood patch. But no more fever or chills or terrible headaches, just the normal kind now. As long as the fever doesn't come back and he stays feeling ok, he will hopefully just keep getting stronger and better. Thank you all so much for you kind thoughts, words, prayers, and offers of help. We appreciate all the love and support so much. There is thunder and it looks like a great big storm rolling in so that is all for now. I'll be checking my email and that more regularly so if you have any questions I'll get back to you. We are headed to New Castle tomorrow to pick up the kids. Thanks so much to their grandparents for taking such excellent care of them. We are all glad this whole ordeal will soon be behind us.