Doing Well Overnight

Grace continued to eat 2oz feedings every three hours through the night with no problems. This morning she was occasionally smiling and was sitting up with minimal help. Waiting to hear from the surgeon on whether she will go home tonight or tomorrow.

Eating!

Grace has taken four two ounce feedings today through her g-tube and has had no problems. Dr. Irish, Grace's pediatric surgeon, says we may be able to go home tomorrow if she keeps up at this pace. He is really happy with how well she is doing! We would like to not rush it but it would be nice to go home...and Hoover would like company.

She hasn't had any morphine for pain today, just Tylenol. She must be tired as she has conked out already.

Out of Surgery

Grace is out of surgery and everything went well, no complications. The surgeon was very pleased with how the proceedure went. He didn't have to seperate the stomach from the inner wall of her body where her g-tube is located (stomach and abdomen have fused together as the g-tube pulls the stomach forward).

She is sleeping now and has been most of the afternoon. She was given some morphine as she was showing some signs of pain and this is very unusual for Grace.

In Surgery

They made the first incision at 9:50am, so far everything is going well.

Fundo what?

Go here for more information:

http://www.webmd.com/heartburn-gerd/Fundoplication-surgery-for-gastroesophageal-reflux-disease-GERD

fundoplication --- not much fun!

We were able to bring Grace home from the hospital last night. She made it through the nuclear imaging study on Thursday which found that she is continually refluxing, most likely it really hurts her, the surgeon told us yesterday that some adults think they are having a heart attack when it happens to them.

We are not jumping up and down to have any surgery done on Grace, but if we do this now any damage that has been done can be healed, Grace will be able to gain weight which will allow her to become stronger and may offer us further options in regards to seizure medication. It will be a slightly tricky surgery in that her g-tube is already in place -- please pray that it will not have to be removed during surgery and then reinserted following the fundoplication.

Grace will have surgery on Wednesday and then be in the hospital for several days following that. In the meantime we have her hooked up to a pump getting a little over one ounce an hour of formula. We are to have her hooked up 20-21 hours a day. Tonight we are taking her off for a little bit so we can attend an event for Hoover. At work over the winter we talked of getting all of our dogs(and families) together for some chasing around......tonight is the night and thanks to Suzi Hoover hasn't been as entirely neglected as he would have been........ but this night in the Harris Household is all about him.

Joy

A few words......

Today Grace and her Grandma hung out here at the hospital. Unfortunately we weren't able to do the test today as some of the isotopes they look for on the nuclear scan are still in her system. We are scheduled to try again tomorrow. Not much else to report.

Throwing Up and Pbbbbbbbt

Well Grace is back in the hospital..... we took Grace to the pediatrician Monday morning and he sent us here..... we were approaching dehydration... we actually had crossed the line a little bit but she got hooked up to some fluids and a slow drip is now providing her with some very important calories. She had a test this morning to look at her reflux - she threw up 16 minutes into it.... we have to do it again tomorrow. If it is reflux we will have to look at a surgery as we have exhausted all medication avenues.

Since we last wrote we seem to have been very busy --- Jennifer and Cori have both left, we miss them both and are getting to know the new people who are taking care of Grace -- I just get overwelmed when I think about how much they both love Grace.

Kevin has started a new job -- regular hours... no weekends! All the red and Khaki has been thrown away.

I submitted my grant application to hopefully further my employment with IDPH.

Grace (despite the throwing up) continues to make great strides, and her hair just keeps growing and getting curlier. She has a few new tricks since we talked with you last, she will lift her chin to you when she wants to be kissed, and makes this great noise with her lips (the pbbbbbst I mentioned in the title). She was so funny when they were putting in the IV - cry and then pbbbbst....cry some more than pbbbst.....pbbbst --

We'll keep you as up to date as we can.... if she could just have an hour of not throwing up tomorrow morning that will sure help us know what to do next. My Mom is here today and tomorrow to help with Grace ---- so glad she's out of school and not fishing yet! I think that's it -- I'll write more later to let you know.

Joy