It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Or, at least in our hospital room! The sun is shining, Rebekah has had some play time and is now working on taking a morning nap.

We had a good night - lots of sleep - until the resident from Pediatric Surgery came in at 5:45 (!!) to check Rebekah's g-tube. I'd like to know who sends these doctors on rounds before 6:00! Anyway, the Peds Surgery group has discussed Rebekah's tube and has come to the conclusion that they do not want to attempt using it again until all of the results from her blood work and stool cultures come back. According to our nurse, it takes 24 hours for the stool study to be completed, so we will not be using the g-tube today. We did not get those samples until close to 10:00 last night, and the doctor did not want to start using the tube at night, so it will be sometime tomorrow before we are given the green light to use it. At least, that is the plan right now. In another hour it may change, but that is our current plan.

Rebekah apparently woke up happy and in a very good mood! After the resident woke us so early, I sneaked Rebekah into my bed and we fell asleep for another cat nap. When Rebekah woke up, she was all smiles and playing. I laid her back in her crib so she could play with some of her toys, and she promptly rolled over onto her tummy - something she has never done before without at least a little help. The nurse and I were so excited to see her rolling! She played on her tummy for quite a while, then promptly rolled back over to her back, started sucking on her fingers and went to sleep.

On that note, I am going to sneak into the shower quick while Rebekah is sleeping. More updates to come as we get them!

Nancy

Forward, then back

This morning Rebekah was looking great, and I was really excited about the possibility of going home tomorrow, but now....not so much.

Rebekah is back on oxygen at 1/2 liter. It's not much at all, but her sats dipped to 68 this afternoon without warning and hovered in the low 70's for long enough that the respiratory therapist (RT) felt we needed her back on a bit of oxygen. Since then, she's been maintaining sats around 90. I asked the RT to listen to Rebekah's lungs, and she did hear some congestion, but no wheezing. That's good! I'm just hoping we're not heading down the same road we were on three weeks ago.

We are still not using the g-tube, nor will we be using it tonight. After discussing it with the doctor, he felt it would be better to run her feeds during the day tomorrow while more doctors and staff are on duty so that they can respond quickly if there is a problem. For now we are continuing to feed by mouth as Rebekah wants it, although she is still not eating as much as she was before we were admitted.

The doctors have ordered an amazing amount of labwork for Rebekah - things with more letters than I can count! She had blood drawn for several test and we are trying to collect stool samples to check for allergies, infections, bacteria and a lot of other things that I don't remember. Then we will be waiting to see what the results of those cultures are.

Based on all of that information, the doctor isn't even thinking of discharging Rebekah before Friday, and possibly not then. It will all depend on how well she does tomorrow during her tube feeding and on the results of her labwork. Until then, we get to hang out together and enjoy some snuggles!

Drew and I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been helping out with the boys and with meals, both during this hospital visit and the last one. We are so blessed to have close friends and family to help, and it really takes some of the pressure off of us! That being said, please keep our boys in mind as you pray for Rebekah. Understandably, they are upset that their sister is back in the hospital and that Mommy is not at home. Grampy and Grammy arrived this afternoon, so at least the boys will be at home and back to more of their normal routine.

Much love,

Nancy

Good Morning, Sunshine!

After what feels like weeks of freezing cold (for us) temperatures and clouds, the sun is shining and it is a balmy (relatively speaking) 40 degrees outside!

Rebekah had a great night last night! She had two bottles before bedtime and then slept through the night (read: Mommy got to sleep through the night!!). She had another good bottle around 9:30 this morning and is snoozing again. I am so thankful for a good night of sleep! After only sleeping about 2 hours Monday night, I was pretty much running on adrenaline yesterday. I was beginning to feel much like a zombie by last night!

We still haven't tried using Rebekah's g-tube yet. I am currently waiting on the doctors to round so we can make some decisions about Rebekah. Other than the uncertainty of her g-tube, she looks great. The nurses removed her oxygen this morning, and her sats are staying in an acceptable range, and Rebekah has not had a fever since yesterday afternoon. It seems that whatever was in her system has made its way out. Now the questions remain as to what exactly did happen and is there any way to prevent or treat the cause so it does not happen again. Those are questions that I hope to have answered today.

I am guessing that if all goes well today for Rebekah (and if there are no further tests that need to be done) that we will be discharged tomorrow. That is only a guess from my very un-medical background, so we will see what the doctors have to say.

That's about it for now. I will update later when I have more information!

Nancy

Better Trends

So it seems that whatever little Miss Bekah's problems are, she is slowly starting to regain lost ground. We are still not using the g-tube until we meet with the doctors tomorrow to see if they want to do any further testing with it, but we have been given the green light to resume bottle feeding. So far Rebekah has had two bottles of breast milk tonight and she has done well. Her fever has also dropped throughout today, which is always a good sign.

All tied up in tubing!

Tonight's plan is to bottle feed as much as Rebekah tolerates it and hopefully catch up on some much-needed sleep! We will see what tomorrow holds when we get there. :)

Nancy

P.S. We'll sleep after the fire alarm, that is!

Much Needed Update!

Hi, all! I apologize for the somewhat vague and cryptic update earlier today. Rebekah was admitted to Greenville Memorial around midnight last night, and the first room we were in did not have enough internet signal for me to access the blog. So, I had to send a post from my cell phone and I was allowed only 160 characters. I was trying to be as brief and informative as I could get into 160 spaces!! :)

Rebekah is doing much better this afternoon, but we still have not found the cause of her distress. When we arrived at the ER yesterday evening, Rebekah was retching badly, not taking a bottle and beginning to become dehydrated. After some quick tests to rule out the flu and a few other things, the doctors decided to admit Rebekah to see how she did overnight. We ended up in the PICU because there were no beds on the general pediatric floor, and I was thankful that we were in the PICU. From midnight until about 5:00 am, Rebekah was very fussy and had several severe bouts of retching; so much so that she was having a hard time keeping her oxygen levels up and had to be put on oxygen. The doctors started IV fluids to keep her hydrated, and we attempted to give her the normal continuous feed that she would have gotten through the night at home, only at half the amount (13 cc's an hour instead of 26). In about thirty minutes, Rebekah's stomach became very swollen and hard as a rock. The x-ray technicians were called to do an x-ray to check for obstructions and placement of the g-tube. By the time they got to Rebekah's room about 45 minutes later, the swelling had dissipated and the x-rays were normal. So, the doctors decided to discontinue the feeds until further tests could be done today, and we finally got to sleep around 5:30. If this post tends to ramble and make no sense, I'm blaming it on lack of sleep! :)

Rebekah has not had any feeds today, either by bottle or by g-tube. She developed a fever this morning (101.5 was the highest) and has continued to need a small amount of oxygen to keep her sats in an acceptable range. Around 2:00, Rebekah and I went downstairs to radiology to have a contrast study done to check again for any obstructions or g-tube problems, and the doctor was not able to find anything wrong. So, now we are waiting to hear back from the pediatric surgeons to find out what they want to do next. Rebekah seems to be resting comfortably and has been sleeping off and on for most of the day. It seems that we will be taking this hospital stay one day at a time to see what happens next.

We are now in a room on the general pediatric floor, and I have internet now (obviously! :). So hopefully I will be able to keep everyone more up-to-date on how Rebekah is doing. Hopefully we will be able to get a little more sleep tonight than we did last night.

Nancy