Post Op Day 4

Sorry for the late post. Caydence has had a very long cruddy day. It started out with getting her blood taken; TWICE! They had been taking blood from her arterial lines, but she got those removed yesterday, so they had to draw blood. As you know, if you read last Friday's post, Caydence has really little veins like her Mommy, so people always have a hard time drawing blood.

After they took her blood, she had to get her pacing wires removed. Pacing wires are small wires that are inserted into the heart during surgery. I know it's kind of gross sounding, but they hung out of her chest following surgery. They were placed in the event something went wrong and they needed to hook them up to an external pacemaker. Since everything went well and her heart is working fine, they removed them. I guess they are just easily pulled out, but Josh and I didn't want to wait around and see them do it. It was worse enough watching when she got her chest tube pulled out yesterday morning.

So after she got her pacing wires removed, the nurse decided to take off all of her bandages from where her arterial lines were and one of her old IV sites. Caydence hates getting tape ripped off her skin, so that obviously didn't make her happy either. Then the doctors decided that they wanted Caydence to poo since she hadn't gone yet, so they induced poo. I don't think I need to go into detail on that one.

After the poo incident, we asked the nurse to give her a bath. She hadn't had a bath since she'd been at the hospital and still had iodine stains on her skin in some places. Unfortunately, we had a crappy nurse today, so she was all cranky about it, but did give her a bath. She also got her Flu shot and RSV shot.

Then this afternoon, she started throwing up during her feedings. The first time it happened, we kind of dismissed it as just one of those things. Then she started getting really spitty and not swallowing. She would just let the spit drool out her mouth. With her next feeding, she threw up twice within 10 minutes of the start of it and kept acting like she had stuff coming up in her throat, like reflux. She was also really hot and sweaty, but had a normal temp.

So we had the doctors and nurses come look at her and they couldn't really think of what could be wrong. They thought that maybe there was some obstruction in her stomach or her ng tube was placed wrong. One doctor even though that maybe she just didn't know how to swallow her spit because she had Down syndrome. Stupid! We kept telling them that this wasn't like her and she didn't usually drool and throw up like this. They decided to stop her feedings, put her back on IV fluids and order an xray.

After a while I came to thinking that she tolerated her feedings fine this morning. So... what has changed since this morning??? Flu shot maybe? So I threw that one out there. I don't know why they hadn't thought of that already. They said it was a possibility, but usually reactions to the flu shot aren't this severe. But they decided to give her anti-nausea medication and tylenol anyway. The chest xray came back fine.

This morning, they said that she would be sent home tomorrow. But with this drooling and throwing up this afternoon and tonight, who knows. The doctor just came in and told me that he wanted to start her feedings again at 11pm. Hopefully she doesn't throw up again. She is still drooling a lot, but she just gave me a couple BIG SMILES! So I guess that is a good sign. She hasn't smiled since before her surgery. Unfortunately Josh has already went to bed in the sleeping room, so he didn't get to see it.

Wish us luck <3