Progress

In the past two days we have seen steady progress in Ellie's recovery.

She is very close to being disconnected from her bionic partners altogether. Her epidural is gone, the heart and breaqthing monitors are gone, her foley catheter is gone (leaving just a uniary tract infection as a souvenir), the NG tube in her nose is gone (leaving just a nasty red sore on her nose):

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The drainage bag for her g-tube is scheduled to be removed later today. If we can get away from the post-op iV fluids during the day and back to good old TPN at night, we could, in theory have a FREE GIRL sometime soon.

On the GI front, she seems to be tolerating her own digestive juices well which is a good sign and has even had some ice chips.. No bloating or distention. We think that a day or so of clamped g-tubes with nowhere for the fluids to go but down and we could start clear fluids- the first step towards feeding again.

This means that she can also brush her teeth again and use the fancy mint flavored sponge lollipops to wash her mouth.

Pain is still an issue and we are struggling a bit in the transition from very low doses of heavy narcotics like Dilaudid (which I have learned is 10 times stronger than morphine and 5 times stronger than heroin) to more conventional pain meds like tylenol. The trick is timing the weaning process to keep her happy. This sounds easy but sometimes pain comes at the four hour mark and sometimes at the 7 hour mark. The good news is that, for the most part, she is on long intervals between heavy meds.

Onward and upward. Gotta go play princesses with my girl.