30
July
2008
Since coming home at the end of April, Dorrie has left home precisely 3 times. Once to go back up to the hospital for Day o’ Appointments, once to go to grammy’s house for her birthday party, and now once to go to the pediatrician for her 1 year checkup.
The nurse who came in to take down her stats must have failed remedial baby measuring (her ear was caught in the head measuring tape, she was wearing a full diaper when she was weighed, etc) so I’m not going to bother to record the numbers.
We decided to delay the MMR vaccine this time, both because Dorrie is still recovering from her ick last week, and also because I think 2 shots at a time is enough for anyone. So chicken pox seemed more important, since there is actual potential for exposure if it came home on my clothes somehow. She handled the varicella and the hep A shots with minimal fuss, and did not even draw blood when she clawed at Bob’s chin. Overall she was well behaved, and we won’t count against her puking in the car seat before we left, puking in the car on the way there, or puking on the table in the exam room.
Posted: little fat fairy, medical morons, our little witch
8
June
2008
A pleasant title, no? But that is what we’ve been dealing with this weekend.
The heat wave that was rolling over the country finally reached us on Saturday and it’s been a sauna since. And it’s not even 90 here yet (according to the car). The AC is already having trouble keeping up with the heat generated by all of Dorrie’s equipment, and I shudder to think what late July and August are going to be like. For her part, Dorrie has been spending her day in the buff, and yesterday I bought a cooling pad which we can place in her bed to keep her back from getting overheated. No such luck for mom and dad, though.
On Friday, we switched over to NeoCate for Dorrie’s food. NeoCate is an amino acid based formula, meaning that it’s supposed to be even easier to digest than breastmilk and is hypoallergenic so it shouldn’t cause any kind of inflammatory reaction in the gut. Except that she’s been puking at nearly every feed, and we don’t know if it’s just because of the heat or because she doesn’t tolerate the NeoCate or because she needs a little longer to get used to it. We are going to try adding a bit more SimplyThick to it (the formula is much thinner than breastmilk) to see if that helps, but if she won’t keep it down, I’m just not sure what we’re going to do.
And to top it off the area around her G-Tube has been making belly boogers again. This is discharge and goo that comes out of the stoma and then dries around below the plastic tube and irritates her skin. It’s quite unpleasant and we’re not sure if that might not be contributing to the puking also. We’ve pulled out the bacitracin again to try and see if a bit of antibiotic might help matters.
In other news, the nurse did not bother to show up or call on Friday, nor did she actually contact the nursing agency as far as we know. So we aren’t sure what’s up with that. Especially interesting is that Dr. Optimist came on Friday again and naturally asked where the nurse was, so I told her. I’m not sure anything will come of that (more likely she will get in trouble as the agency knows she didn’t show — Bob called to find out if she had called in sick) but I am finding having the nurse here during the day gets more and more on my nerves as time goes on.
Posted: medical morons, moving forward... or not, our little witch