Oct 23, 2008

We're Home!

Yea! We made it home about 6:30. Had a hodge-podge dinner of left-overs. And are back to life as normal. You would hardly know that Ainsley was in the hospital on morphine just this morning. Evie's doing homework, Adrian's kicking a ball around the house, I'm on the computer and Ainsley is in the living room on hands and knees playing with the toys she got for her birthday less than a week ago. She still will not smile no matter what we do which, as you know, is unusual for her. Poor thing must be in a lot of pain still but she's persevering. I'm sure it'll be better tomorrow.

Edited to add: I guess I missed some details. What I think happened was that she was having excess gas due to the anesthesia and surgery and it was causing the intense pain spikes yesterday. Yesterday evening instead of doing continuous feedings we did gravity boluses and setup a g-tube extension and open 60ml syringe to vent the g-tube. It immediately seemed to ease the pain and we were able to gradually reduce the morphine and transition her over to oxycodone by 2:30. Overnight we switched to a continuous drip. In the morning, rather than doing the continuous feedings that the surgery resident recommended, we continued with boluses and continuous venting and got her up to her goal of 50 ml per hour by 4:45. That was the magic ticket for coming home, off the morphine, IV and at full feeds of 50 ml per hour.

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