Monkey Business.

Last week, Ian was in the hospital.

Most of you may not know that Ian has a dairy allergy. This means no pizza, no cheese, no ice cream, not certain types of bread, no butter, and of course, not milk. Well, this has put quite a damper on his meals and brought quite the challenge to our grocery shopping. Well, for the past few months he has not gained much weight, has been throwing up once or twice every other week and just not wanting to eat (except breakfast). So we set up an appointment to find out what was up with his digestive system.

He had an Esophagogastroduodenoscopy, (I know, the nurse was impressed I pronounced it correctly too) where a tube with a light & camera were sent down his esophagus and just into his small intestine in search of trouble. They did a biopsy and took some pictures. Additionally, they inserted a ph test tube through his nose and down his throat that was connected to a monitor for him to carry around for 24 hours. Oh, how wonderful.

What you don't see in this picture, are the white foam arm wraps, dubbed "No No's", that were velcro'd around his elbows keeping him from bending his arms and pulling the tube out of his throat. It took a little while to get used to, but he figured out how to play and have fun around the house with them on. He didn't like them on when it was time to eat. Like most hospital procedures, he wasn't able to eat for 12 hours before, and was starving by the time we got home. So we took them off to let him eat and made sure he didn't pull the tube out. As you can see, he was very thankful.

We pulled out one of his old Monkey backpacks and tore the back pouch open a little wider to hold the monitor. It was an easy fit and a more relaxing unit to carry around than a black plastic choke-machine.

Big thanks to Lyndsey for volunteering to take the tape off his face and pull the tube out of his nose. There was just no way I could do it without Ian ending up back at the hospital.