"This is what I looked like at 11:30PM last night when my mom wanted to go to sleep!"
Kate's wound vac is O U T!! Yay! It was a very unpleasant experience for her...poor little tyke. The tape they used to keep it on her chest was as big as my hand. You know what it would feel like to have a band-aid pulled off your chest? Well...times that by 10! After they got the tape off, they had to take the sponge out of the wound. It was stuck to some of the skin. Owwww..... She will end up having a much wider scar there than the rest of her incision site. Thankfully, it's at the bottom of her incision, so it won't show.
They then had to change the dressing around her central line, which is in her neck--near her hair. Another huge piece of tape--this time about half the size of my palm, but of course, stuck to some of her hair.
POOR BABY!!!
More good news for today is that we happened onto something that she is able to E.A.T!!! Yeah!! Of all things, she likes tomato soup and ate a whole bowl!! It's a small bowl, but it's the most she has eaten in one sitting since her surgery. She slurped it up with lots of cute sound effects, including a big 'aaahhhh,' after each spoonful. :) She is trying soooo hard to swallow the solid foods that she puts in her mouth. She occasionally gets something down and then opens her mouth and points to it so that I can cheer for her. She knows we all want her to eat and she is trying to please us. My heart hurts for her. She has had some Coke today, but didn't guzzle it like I had hoped.
They told me that for the past three days, she is averaging 30% of her caloric needs and 90% of her protein. I doubt today will be any better, even though she ate the soup because she hardly drank any of her high calorie milkshakes.
Her creatine levels started rising yesterday, which means her kidney's are a bit stressed. They are not at an alarming rate or anything. If the creatine levels go up again tomorrow, they will counter it with some medicine.
I have asked for a different medicine for the thrush, but haven't gotten an answer. She still has it--it's visible on her tongue, and I'm sure it's in her throat, since she still can't swallow. She obviously wants food because she puts it in her mouth, but then can't get it down and ends up spitting it out. She keeps trying though, bless her little heart.
My brother's wife came to visit today and her father is a doctor. She said that when he heard about how Kate was almost done with surgery but started to bleed (and they had to put her back on the heart/lung machine and open her heart up again), he said, "And she's still alive?? That's amazing because that is how most patients die during a surgery. The procedure itself goes okay but then some bleeding starts and that's when we lose them." I am soooo thankful that God preserved her life and allowed us to keep her with us.
"Graham and Tatum, thank you for the pretty pictures!"
PFK!!
