Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 79

They took out the NG tube from Samuel last night. He started taking clear liquids this morning. If he drinks enough they will take out the IV.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 78

Praise God, Samuel had two bowel movements today. He is also completely off oxygen. They also turned off the suction from the NG tube. The surgery practitioner said the NG tube could come out as soon as tonight. The next step is to wait a while and then they will start giving him clear liquids by mouth. Leyla's uncle and aunt are flying in from Puerto Rico tonight to help and to celebrate Christmas. It is going to be difficult not having Samuel at home for Christmas. The giant bull dozer toy is going to stay under the tree until Samuel comes home. We are very pleased with his progress. Thank you for your prayers and kind words.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 77

Samuel is doing as well as can be expected. They have reduced his oxygen from 1 liter to .2 liter which is great. Yesterday he was getting about half the pain medication of the day before. Today he is off the continuous feed of pain medication and it is just as needed. We are walking Samuel around 3 times a day to try to get his intestines moving again. He will be given pedialyte as soon as he passes gas or has a bowel movement. I know this sounds like a funny request but could you pray that he passes gas or has a BM. That is the next phase of his recovery. He really likes to be held. Leyla and I are taking turns. More later.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 76

The surgeons rounded today and I was able to ask them several questions. I am also going to try to answer some of the questions each of you have posted on facebook.

Did the vomiting cause the hernia or did the hernia cause the vomiting?
The intestine went up through a hole in the diaphragm and twisted. When the food got to the twist, it couldn't pass and caused the vomiting. The intestine went up in there over a period of months. This isn't something that happened overnight.

Why did the surgery take so long?
There was a lot of scar tissue on the liver from the previous surgery. The liver was actually attached to the intestine and to the abdomen wall. They had to cut the scar tissue off the liver and the intestine. The intestine was also attached to the abdomen wall. Samuel had to have a blood transfusion during surgery because his liver bled when they removed the scar tissue.

How big is the patch in the diaphragm?
On Samuel's right side, he has hardly any material left in his diaphragm. He does have a small rim but it is now mostly a gortex patch there. See the picture I posted on facebook.

Why is Samuel on so much oxygen?
Samuel is on a full liter of oxygen because he is breathing fast due to the surgery. The NG tube down his throat is also bothering him. To give you some history Samuel was completely off oxygen in January. Before that he was getting .2 Liter just at night.

How long is Samuel going to be in the hospital?
He is going to be here for 7 to 10 days or until he passes gas or has a bowel movement.

How long is it going to take for the incision to heal?
6 weeks.

When is he going to be able to eat again?
A few days.

There are two goals for today:
1. To remove the Foley (a Foley is like a catheter for boys). They just did that this morning.
2. To have him walk. Samuel's intestines are in shock from the surgery and we need to wake them up to get them working again.

Thank you for your prayers.

Samuel Kenneth Finzer Update 75

Leyla and I are in total shock and in kind of a daze. Forgive me if this post is incoherent. Samuel had three days of vomiting a week and a half ago. We took him to the ER and they said that there is a really bad virus going around. After a shot for Nausea Samuel recovered and had about four days where he was feeling well. We had a wonderful birthday party for Samuel. This past Wednesday Samuel started vomiting again. On Friday morning he was bent over screaming in pain. Leyla took him to urgent care at 12:30pm. I arrived at 1:30pm. They determined that Samuel was dehydrated and sent us to the ER for a fluid IV. After several hours they took an X-Ray and determined that Samuel had re-herniated. A couple loops of intestine had gone up into the chest cavity. He had surgery at 8:30pm to put the intestine back into the abdomen and sew up the hole. They were finished about 12:15am. The surgery took several hours because of all the scar tissue from the previous re-herniation. (Samuel had his second re-herniation in April 2010.) This time they put a gortex patch in his diaphragm. Hopefully this will prevent future rips in the diaphragm. Samuel is in the hospital now. They have him on morphine for the pain and an anti-itch medicine for the side effect of the morphine. He is also on 1 liter of oxygen in a cannula. His lungs are fine but he just needed some extra oxygen after the surgery. He is running a temp and they are giving him Tylenol for that. Samuel isn't too happy since he also has an Nasal Gastric (NG) tube down his throat to take out the fluid that accumulated in his stomach during surgery. Samuel is out of the NICU and in a regular room at the hospital. He will be in here a week since they had to reopen the incision plus a little more.

We are living this verse today:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose.

Thank God that the herniation was found before something worse happened.
Thank God that my work was let out early on Friday and I was able to be with Leyla.
Thank God that a surgeon was available to do the Surgery on the same day.
Thank God for Gary and Linda Fisher who stood by our side in the Operating waiting room.
Thank God that Leyla's mom is on vacation and is able to help with the girls.
Thank God that Leyla's uncle is coming for Christmas on Wednesday so we will have even more hands to help.
Thank God that there is no RSV going around and the kids can visit Samuel.

Thank you for your prayers.

Sharing Calendars in Windows Phone 7

My wife and I have two windows phones with separate windows live ids. We want to share calendars. This is especially important for us with all the doctors appointments that my son has.
The 1.0 version of Windows Phone 7 does not allow you to use the calendar sharing in either hotmail or live mail. I have confirmed this with Microsoft. (See calendar syncing). It also does not allow you to do calendar sharing with separate gmail accounts. You also cannot share a single hotmail calendar when you have two separate live ids. Google to the rescue. You can use a single gmail account and link it to two phones.

Here is the process:
1. Create a gmail account.
2. On both phones, in the windows phone settings add the gmail account. Under content to sync, unselect everything except Calendar.
3. On both phones, go to the calendar, click on the elipsis at the bottom and click on calendars. Disable the windows live calendar and make sure the google calendar is on.

That is it.

Enjoy.