Politics, Politics, Politics

You know the saying that success has many parents and failure is an orphan? Well the parents are coming out of the woodwork to take credit for Ellie's tremendous gains in her liver chemistry (1.3 was the last bilirubin number). It is strange for us to be in the middle because everyone is looking out for her best interests but there is a bit of a struggle for the credit that goes along with her recent success.

On one side we have the most doctor who is taking care of Ellie's fish oil, which she has been on for a long while. Her liver numbers have followed the trend of other fish oil babies and has peaked and fallen on schedule.

On the other side are Ellie's primary doctors who are coming into the scene and claim that because she has successful surgery that her liver has started to behave, even though her liver started toto move towards behaving well before her surgery. From their view, the fish oil might just as well be snake oil. Abby and I think that this is because the fish oil isn't their project. They also told us today that, curiously, some kids have a sudden improvement in their liver function even when nothing changes on their TPN. we had never heard this before which is curious.

The good thing in this debate/struggle is that everyone has Ellie's best interests in mind and that her course of treatment won't change because of it. We are all still trying to get her fully fed and off TPN.

We had been warned about things that happen in academic hospitals. I guess that this is the first case of it with Ellie. I hope that we ahve more successes to fight over in the future.