Isaac’s law is something similar to “Murphy’s law”, only instead of everything that can go wrong will go wrong, Isaac’s is something like “anything that can happen WILL happen to Isaac”. There are so many examples in our lives of Isaac’s law, many just go right by us without us realizing them. Others are bigger – a routine esophageal dilation resulting in a torn esophagus that leads to a hole in the lung, said holes being closed and re-opening when Isaac returns to school and catches a flu, feeding tubes that get pulled out under almost impossible circumstances..
Our latest example of Isaac’s law – he went for a routine chest xray on Friday. The pulmunologist called and let me know that in fact, Isaac’s lungs look good (I’m not sure what scale he is using when he says good – good for a normal kid, or good for Isaac). What didn’t look so good is Isaac’s J portion of his feeding tube (the tube has two pieces, one goes into his belly – the G, the other travels through Isaac’s stomach and into his intestine, resting just before his Jejunem, this is the J tube. Isaac gets feeds during the day into his G tube, at night his J – to avoid reflux. The bad news is that Isaac’s J tube was coiled in his stomach. Once I stopped laughing at what the doctor had told me I told him that we mostly feed Isaac through his G tube anyway, making this much less of a worry than it initally appeared.
So, we will spend time at Loudoun Hospital on Monday to get a new GJ tube put into Isaac (doesn’t everyone keep a spare GJ tube in their basement??). We considered just putting a plain old G tube in, until he got sick and threw up this morning, presumably from the food in his belly while he is laying down.
Now you have been introduced to Isaac’s Law, a routine chest xray turns up a coiled J tube – comical in and of itself, but add the fact that the J tube shouldn’t coil in the belly and you really have something to laugh at