Thursday, August 03, 2006

Big day for a little girl

Ellie has had a very busy day today so far.

In addition to her steady stream of IV drugs going into her system (5 or 6 different drugs at this point delivered every hour or so), Ellie has done all of these things too:

At 9:30 this morning a new IV line was installed in her arm because the doctors are afraid that the lingering infection in her central line will force them to remove it tomorrow. I really hope that we can keep this line site because it is a very good site that is easy to maintain and also because there are a limited number of sites for her to use and losing one this early would sucko.

As soon as the IV line went in, she had her daily blood tests drawn.

Then we were off to Radiology for her more frequent KUB (Kidney-Ureter-Bladder) lower abdominal X-rays.

Some more drugs, then it is time for a blood transfusion to make up for the volume of blood that has been withdrawn from the Bank of Ellie this week. Which brought about the following conversation:

Gib: Wow, that looks like a lot of blood in that IV to go into a little girl.

Jill, the nurse: She doesn't get it all, just part of it. The rest is in case something happens.

Pause. Pause. Really gory thoughts. What could tha what if be? It's gotta be gory. Leaks, sprays of blood from the IV bag, pools of yet to be transfused blood.

Jill: You know, if the line clogs or something like that.

Gib: Thanks for telling me that. I was wondering what that meant.

We hope that she will be happier with some more juice running through her. she is sleeping a lot today, but like I said the other day, you'd be sleepy too if you had her schedule.

1 comment:

Barbara Krause said...

Damn, you can't miss this blog for a day. Let alone a couple. You all are the strongest, wittiest, tightest family that I know. Demand a lot when they come for the movie/book/song rights to this story.

I don't know what's scarier: Ellie's purple lips or Variteck's knee. But Ellie is a champ. And a beautiful one at that.

Love and hugs,
Barbara