Monday, November 12, 2007

Out of Balance

Tomorrow morning we head to Boston for an unscheduled visit with Dr. Jennings.

Ellie's 'numbers' (urine out, ostomy output, stool in her diaper) have been creeping away from the very stable range that we have enjoyed for the last few months and are now raising some flags for us and her doctors. She is in great spirits and happy as can be but her numbers are a bit troubling for those of use that watch her charts like some folks watch the stock market.


Je suis une artiste!

We were warned when she had the ostomy put in that we would always need to watch her numbers to make sure that she was in balance and we have religiously charted every diaper and set of ostomy balls (balls!) since we came home. She is usually very good on balancing her input and output but over the last week or so the balance has gone away.

Today her ostomy output went over 1000 ml for the day around 5 PM. Her normal range is around 400-500 ml per day and when it hit 1000 we got in touch with Dr. Jennings.

He didn't want us to go to the ER but we are leading off the day tomorrow in his office hours.

There are a lot of reasons that this could be happening. She could have a stomach bug. She could have another kind of infection, virus, or yeast. she could have an allergy to one of the foods that we have introduced. There may be something else going on.

Whatever it is we want to have her checked out and make sure that all of that fluid that is going out of her isn't screwing up her electrolytes.

This may win us a complimentary stay at Boston's finest hospital to get her back in line and maybe run some drugs through her. We have dusted off our 'Go Bag' of essentials to get us through a stay in the hospital. toothbrush, pajamas, clean clothes, stuff for Ellie to play with etc. To be honest we had gotten a bit complacent and unpacked the Go Bag a few months ago.

Never a dull moment.

We are both dreading taking Ellie back for a stay. She is a lot different today than when we left 11 months ago:
We are guessing that she won't really like being confined to the floor all that much.

The current Vegas line is 3-to-1 in favor of an overnight stay with an over/under of 2 nights.

I'll take the under if it's all the same to you.

1 comment:

Mikele said...

Shoot!