Update on Benjamin

[This is Joel again.]

Thanks for your prayers and your patience in waiting for an update. I have spent all day at the hospital. The day was pretty much a waste. Ben feels fine and he and I got to spend a lot of time play together, which was nice. However, the hospital could not seem to make up it's mind what to do with Ben. He is not in pain and shows no outward signs of any issues. They would have preferred to send us home and make us set up some out-patient appointments. Our pediatric practice however, fought to keep us in so that they would have to do something with us, to try and find out what was causing the bleeding. Which we appreciate, though it stinks that we have to sit around in the hospital twiddling our thumbs.

As a brief bit of history that I did not include on the previous post, Ben has had one previous episode before, about 2-3 months ago. It was almost exactly the same as far as how long it lasted, the blood, the blood clot, etc. The first time it happened, it happened in the evening. We talked to the on-call doctor for our pediatric practice. He had advised waiting until the morning to see if the bleeding continued. It did not, so no follow up happened. When it happened again a few months later, it was definitely more concerning.

I'm tired, so I won't go into all the details. Ben will be in the hospital at least through Friday. Tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. he has a merkel scan. Friday at 1:00 he has a colonoscopy. I never thought I would be taking my three-year old to have a colonoscopy. Both of these are for the purpose of trying to figure out where the bleeding comes from.

Please continue to pray that the doctors will discover what caused the bleeding. Also pray for Stephanie and Ben who will be spending at least three nights in the hospital. Poor Ben. He really wanted to come home this evening. He was fine until I left to pick up Will and Ellie from our friends' home.

Thank you for all of us,

Joel