What a week

Yahoo!

It's finally over. The house is sold. The week of meetings is over. Everyone has gone home and we are slowly getting back to our version of normal.

I had to go to meetings north of Boston Monday through Thursday this week. I commuted to avoid staying in hotel rooms and further confusing my body about where it is sleeping but I had very little time to spend with Ellie or Abby this week which was very tough. I spent Sunday night in the hospital and came back on Wednesday night very late to sleep there again, but didn't have a lot of time to see my girls.



Abby pulled marathon shifts in the penthouse again. She went to a meeting with the doctors on Tuesday to have a head-to-head meeting:

and map out the next steps for Ellie. It looks like we will be scheduled for another surgery the second week of October. Ellie will have her intestines separated and have the lower opening of her small bowel brought to the surface and through a hole in her belly (a stoma) which will drain into a bag. This will hopefully take the pressure of her bowel like opening up the knot in a ballon and let her dialted bowel come down in size. The meeting this week was to reconfirm that Abby and I knew about the intensive monitoring she will need and how much work it will take to keep it in line to begin with. Neither of us have shyed away from work when it comes to Ellie so we assured tham that we know what we are getting into from talking to other stoma parents and are ready for the challenge since it offers the best chance for Ellie to get her bowels moving.

So we wait and watch and rest up in the next two weeks before the real fun begins.

Ellie is doing well even though she has gotten the hospital bug called Clostridium ('C-diff' in hospital parlance) which has given her a bit of diarrhea. We were excited to see her poop rate go up but it stayed up without a reason and she was screen mid week. All this means for now is that she can't go into the playroom (where she probably got the bug to begin with) and the nurses have to wear gowns and gloves when the treat her. She is already on antibiotics to control the other bugs in her gut so no change there.

No biggie.