08.22.2008 - Biopsy Postponed

From Julian's COTA Journal.

Julian's 3-month protocol kidney biopsy, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed. He'd been coughing all day yesterday, and has been struggling with nasal congestion over the past couple of weeks, to the point where it's been waking him up at night. Things seemed to be getting worse in the past few days. The night before last was pretty miserable for Julian and Stacy, so I took an earlier flight yesterday to come join them and hopefully offer some support.

We spent some time talking about it after I arrived. It doesn't seem to be in his lungs - mainly upper resperatory junk. It's hard not to become consumed with worry over this kind of thing: the prospect of him coming down with bronchitis or pneumonia while on immune-suppressants is not a good one. After considerable discussion about what to do, we decided to go to CPK for some cheese pizza - one of Julian's favorite meals!

As we were eating, Julian kept coughing and at one point started to gag. We were on the edge of frantic when he stopped gagging and stuck out his tongue. There, on the end of his tongue, was something semi-clear and yellow and round. It turned out to be half of a husk from a popcorn kernel! Julian has been eating popcorn for a while now, but only in the past few weeks has Stacy started to give it to him without de-kernelling it for him. As near as we can tell, the husk lodged somewhere back there and has been bothering him ever since.

Now, I wish I could tell you he's all better and we had a great night's sleep last night. Not so. The coughing was worse than ever - but the nasal congestion seems to have receded. He can actually breathe through his nose. So now it's just the coughing keeping him up. We suspect that the kernel scratched his throat while it was down there, and maybe even again on its way up, and that may be what's causing the irritation. His lungs are clear, and the docs don't seem to think that a chest x-ray is necessary.

He has no other symptoms - no fever, still playful and engaging, still singing, still eating all his favorite things. Just coughing. We gave him a warm bath this morning, and that seems to have helped. He wants to go to San Francisco, so I think we'll go hang out at the ferry terminal and have lunch at Mistral. He's not acting sick (and yes, we're keeping the doctors informed about his condition), so we're going take him out for a day out on the town. We'll see how he does.

Stay tuned.

David