Surgical Follow-up

James saw his surgeon today for his last day doing clinical check-ups (the surgeon, not James). James' surgeon is moving to DC to be a Chief of Pediatric Surgery at the National Children's Hospital. (He will still be doing operations through the end of June). We feel quite blessed to have had such a great surgeon doing all of James' procedures. Anyway his surgeon is pleased with how the j-tube looks and would like to be more aggressive in getting him off of it. This is obviously okay with us. The plan is to do an outpatient procedure next week on Wednesday. They will scope his esophagus to make sure that the connection is still strong and healed up. If the connection has narrowed any, then he will also dilate it (stretch it) at this time. The doc will also take a look at the size of James' stomach and make sure it's ready for increased oral feeds. If everything looks good, then James can switch to just being on the tube at night time. The idea is that this will help build his appetite and hopefully get him free of the tube sooner. I am very hopeful that James will be tube free by this first birthday, which is just 8.5 weeks away!