Darn it!

Good news and not so good news.
Good news first. We're out of the PICU. We got moved to the Children's Surgical unit yesterday afternoon. It was a much better transition than the last time. We actually got moved into the exact same room that we were discharged from in October. So that's kind of nice.
Now the not so good news. Elaina couldn't tolerate her feeds. We started out at 2 ml an hour, and then were supposed to move up 4 ml every 6 hours until full feeds were achieved. She tolerated the first increase, but when we tried to move it up to 10 ml an hour, she was miserable. They tried to feed her and vent it at the same time and it just backed up. Within about 30 minutes there were 3 hours of feeds backed up in the tube that was supposed to be dripping into her g-tube. She was very agitated, so it was decided to stop feeds. Surgery is concerned that her bowels just haven't woken up yet from surgery. That coupled with the fact that she hasn't been fed gastrically for the last 9 months means that we truly need to proceed with caution. She's also developed a small fever. This is her first fever since we were discharged from Primary Childrens back in October. They've drawn labs to make sure that she's not developing an infection. Her stoma site (where the g-tube enters her stomach) looks pretty inflamed, so I'm a little concerned. I've been asked why the tube is up so high on her tummy. I talked to the surgeon about it when he rounded this morning, and he said that it's just her anatomy. That's where her stomach is, so that's where they put the tube.
Well, the rest of her team is coming by for rounds, so I'm gonna go. I will post more either tonight or this afternoon when I know what the plan is and once it's been implemented.

Thanks for checking up on us!

Hugs,
Hollie, Ben and Elaina