Great Labs and the Start of Formula

Today has been rather uneventful again.  The doctors on rounds decided that we should start Annie on regularly scheduled zofran around the clock to help prevent all her retching, gagging, and vomiting.  She got one dose the other night and it seemed to help dramatically, so they are planning to keep her on it for a few days.

We also started Annie on half-strength formula at the slow, slow rate of 20cc/hr.  Around 2:30 this afternoon we actually bumped it up to 30cc/hr since she's doing just fine with it.  I'm getting a lot more air out of her tummy when I'm venting her now, but so far no more bile. I think she'll probably tolerate her formula like this just fine with the zofran on board, but we also anticipate her diarrhea to get worse.  The hope is that by starting some formula, that it will be denser and have the proteins and other elements that might help wake-up her gut and get things working better.  Or it might just backfire on us, but so far, so good.

We're trying to figure out exactly why its taking her so long to tolerate feeds after her last surgery.  But because zofran is helping, we're led to believe it is a problem in her brain, and not her GI tract.  Zofran doesn't work in the stomach, but it's a drug that works in the brain, so the fact that it helps, leads us to believe that Annie's brain is still having troubles getting regulated again since all her procedures under general anesthesia last week.

We plan to keep her on the zofran for a couple days as we continue to increase her feedings, and then start cutting back on the zofran to see what happens.  She won't be able to go home until she can tolerate her regular feedings without vomiting and have enough of a decrease in her diarrhea that she won't get dehydrated without the IV fluids she's currently on.

Today is also Annie's first day of being on her long-term home regimen of IV antibiotics, so they need to watch her on those for several days to make sure she is tolerating them well.  Whenever we think about these big bazooka antibiotics she's getting and how she'll get them for a whole year, we just get so nervous.  We're scared about so many potential complications that can arise from being on such powerful antibiotics for so long, but there's really no other way to completely eliminate the infection in her back.  We continue to just try to take one day at a time.  Our immediate challenges now are feedings so that is what we are trying to focus on for now.

Annie's labs from this morning looked really great!  Her sodium and potassium levels are stable and in normal range at 142 and 3.5 respectively.  Annie's creatinine still continues to drop to 0.34 today which is fabulous.  Annie's hemoglobin is hanging out at 8.7 which isn't great, but it's not going any lower.  And Annie's white blood cell count is the lowest it's been since she was hospitalized 2 1/2 weeks ago--at 16,900!!  Annie's weight check today was 66.4 lbs, which means she's lost nearly all the water weight she had from retained fluids earlier.  So everything is heading in the right direction.  We just need to get her GI tract to agree with the game plan!

Balloons from several friends!

Molly and Lexie came up to the hospital yesterday to decorate Annie's room.

I've been hanging out with a happy girl today!  We love Zofran!