Friday, January 11, 2008

Soft and pink

Those are the words that Dr. Jennings used to describe Ellie’s liver. Take a minute to think about that, 20 months on TPN and her liver is “Soft and Pink”. He took a biopsy of both lobes, but said from what he could see and feel, it is in great shape. THANK YOU OMEGAVEN, THANK YOU DRS PUDER&GURA!!!!!

Obviously she is done. We got a call around 1:30 from Dr. Jennings and met him at Au Bon Pain while he got his lunch. He said that the intestines looked great, very little adhesions and that the connection between small and large bowel looked great. The reason food wasn’t going down the colon was that the connection had folded over on it’s self. He straightened everything out and said that is all that was needed.

He did make the ostomy smaller, but only under the skin, so what we see from the surface will look the same. He was going to make the skin opening smaller but said that would have caused a wrinkle in the skin, he was concerned that this would make it hard to keep ostomy bags on. We really appreciate the fore thought, we don’t need any more ostomy bag challenges.

G-tube. He looked at the old track and decided that here was not much he could do. So he installed a new hole. He cut a new hole in the skin but used the same hole in her stomach. It looks great and we are going to try everything we can to keep this one looking good.

Ellie moved to recovery in the PACU at 3:30 and we got to the floor around 5pm. But, we are not on 10 East (8west) there were no beds available. We begged and pleaded but they weren’t willing to kick some one out for us. Shame. So, now we are on 10 South. Same church different pew.

Ellie looks great. She had a very easy recovery with very little pain. She still has the epidural and it seems to be working great. Knock on wood, this is the best recovery she has had so far. It isn’t fun to see so many wires and tubes coming out of her, but they are all helping her feel better. The first time she woke up she looked at me said, “Ma, Ma” and then gave me the sign for the Wiggles. So we pulled out the DVD and we have a very happy girl.

We now can not post on our blog using the hospital’s WIFI, we have to wander with a laptop and find a free signal. We will post more when we can.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay, yay, yay!!! The oxygen just filled my lungs completely for the first time in a couple of days. I'm thinking of you guys and Ellie's beautiful smile. Keep those Wiggles coming. See you soon. I love you!

Anonymous said...

We took a deep breath. Tell Ellie Jack said, "Nice going." See you this week.

Jack

Anonymous said...

We are all hoping that Ellie's recovery goes smooth and she is back home dressing up and playing!
We are so happy that the surgery went well.

Holly said...

I'm so glad Ellie is doing well and that they just needed to 'tidy' things up while in surgery! We've been thinking about your family and you'll be in our prayers as Ellie makes her recovery.

Holly
mom to Caleigh, Gastroschisis, SBS, G- button, TPN dependent, BO
www.hollydgray.blogspot.com