So far, so good

Well today marks a week of the great Ellie Brogan TPN experiment. Since we have been told to look at the weekly trends in results rather than the day-to-day ups and downs that may swing depending on small things, here are the notes for the first week.

She is feeling great and doesn't seem to notice the difference between TPN and hydration fluid.
She still has lots of energy, is happy and, if anything is a bit hungrier in the morning than she was in the past but that may be our imagination. It is always great to hear her tell us that she is hungry.

She is keeping her weight up. This morning she weighed in at almost exactly where she was a week ago. That counts as a win in my book.

Fish oil is agreeing with her. We have started to give her liquid fish oil through her g-tube to replace those great omega-3's that she isn't getting from omegaven anaymore. The antiinflammatory properties along with the other great things that omega-3's have done for her are too good to pass up so we have done our homework and have a bottle of lemon-scented fish oil that replaces some of the oils that she was getting. I say some because I did the math (yes, I can still do stoichiometry from chemistry) and she would need a huge amount of liquid oil, about 30 ml or one ounce per day, to replace the dense good oils in her omegaven. We're not that brave and are pretty sure that she will dump that right out of her ostomy so we are giving her about half of that and will add it as we go.

We won't know if she is missing the other parts of TPN like vitamins and proteins for a while and will have those checked next week when we go in for her stay at Childrens for her tests.

It will be like clinic. With a bed.

So we keep on moving, eating and watching Ellie do her tricks.

Ellie is really enjoying Christmas and thinks that our tree and some well-timed snow is the greatest thing in the world. Even though we only got 1/2 an inch yesterday, we made a snowman (all 8 inches of it) and threw snowballs. The tree is up, the animatronic snowmen are singing and it is off to the races.