Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Back up and at 'em

At 5 PM tonight Ellie's adventure with manometry finally came to an end with a successfully completed full test and 10 hours of squiggles for the doctors to look at, analyze and interpret. We should have results in a week or two but the doctors very careful not to give us any preliminary results in such a technical test.

The reason is that the test produced a lot of these computer records (10 hours worth): Each line is a separate sensor in a manometry catheter. The top 5 or 6 are her stomach, the next 5-6 are her small bowel and the rest are her colon. Although these are lines are relatively flat, we watched as she finally pooped out the test solution late this afternoon and can tell you that the squiggles really dance when her bowels move.

Whether they are doing the right dance is the big question.

A little after 5 the doctor came in, removed the catheters from her colon, ostomy and g-tube hole, replaced the g-tube button with a fresh new mic-key button and we were done.

Ellie was ready for a walk around the floor:
By about 6:45 we had Ellie back in her bed and Abby was doing her best to keep Ellie from doing 'exercises' in her bed when I left:

Post Test, Wednesday 6:30 PM

She had Cheerios and elecare for dinner. We will come home tomorrow morning and spend the next day or so feeling our way along and trying get her back up to full meals as quickly as possible and hope that the little girl that we brought into pre-op yesterday is back in full force.

They sure look like the same kid:

Pre-Op, Tuesday, 1:00 PM

1 comment:

Kate said...

Man, she looks huge in those pictures. There's something about "Ellie in the hospital" pictures that I expect to see a tiny girl.

Glad it all ended up so well. She's such a trouper. "Stick things in all sorts of impolite places and make me barf for a day? OK, whatever. What's next?"