Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Close call

Yesterday Claira, Kaylee and I were feeling under the weather. I woke up with a serious stomach virus, Kaylee came home from school feeling the same and Claira woke up looking pale and a bit on the cranky side. I've come to learn that when Claira gets pale, it means she wants attention! At 1:00 pm she pulled out her NG tube. This was the first time she's ever pulled it out while the feeds were running, so I got concerned about the possibility of it getting into her lungs. I didn't hear back from the doctor's office until 6:00 pm and by then it had been 5 hours since she'd eaten and when the doctor's office called they asked that we take her immediately into the after-hours clinic at St. Francis Hospital. Since I was sick, Tom had the honors. So he came home to a disastrous house and had to turn around again to the hospital.
After a few hours he called to tell me that they were preparing to keep her over night for observation because of how badly her chest x-ray looked! Fortunately, the attending doctor on call was Dr. Barton (one of the docs who treated her during her hospital stay). He compared the x-ray to one they took just before she was discharged and decided that it wasn't worse or better than before. He said he didn't want to put us through that again. He sent them home and prescribed a double dose of lasiks. The nurse put the NG tube back in and by 11:00 pm she had food in her tummy again. The frustrating part is that after 10 hours of nothing in her tummy she never would take a bottle! It's been three weeks since we've been able to feed her more than 1/2 an ounce by mouth.
Today the pediatrician had us start the Xopenex treatments again to help her get the crud moving in her lungs. Thankfully (after complaining about how much I hate the bulb syringe) he had home health bring an aspirator and a B.B.G. (that's short for Baby Booger Grabber). It's a vacuum to suck out her little nose. That's probably why she was looking so pale yesterday, the poor little bug couldn't breathe! As far as the eating problems ... we're not going to push it right now ... we'll just deal with one thing at a time!

1 comment:

Awesome Mom said...

I am glad that she avoided more hospital time! As far as the eating goes it is very likely that she will out grow it. My son Evan who was a horrid eater as a baby is now a normal two year old eater and is tube free after being dependent on it for several years.

Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Thank you David and Gina Brim for helping to express our gratitude for an amazing show of compassion and generosity.