2 Henson

If you've been to Children's Mercy Hospital then you know that means Ellie has been admitted and is staying on 2 Henson. The last day of March, Elllie had her button taken out (NO Tubes!). It should have been great news, but we spent the following 9 days with her site leaking, irritating her sensitive skin, trying to stay hydrated, fighting occassional vomiting and trying to control pain. The last straw was Thursday morning. She spent the entire night awake and after only 2 ounces of milkshake, she threw up and it had a green tint with brown flecks. Green usually means bile and brown is dried blood. Her surgeon's office sent us to the ER at Children's. After 10 hours, 5 tries for an IV line, 2 different doctors, lots of explanations, lots of frustration,1 x-ray and 1 bag of fluid; Ellie was finally admitted. In a nutshell, she was severely dehydrated from the loss of fluid (no matter how much I gave her, we couldn't keep up) and extremely constipated (colon was full--pain med was constipating and not getting enough fluids to move it out). She has had lots of fluids to hydrate her now and is getting enemas to help her bowels. A wound nurse came in to find a new way to protect her skin from leakage and help it heal until the hole can be closed. There is a bag attached to it to collect fluid (there's still quite a bit coming from it). A pic line (catheter that administers fluids into the artery) was placed yesterday so she could receive nutritional fluids. Unfortunately, I walked in this morning to the arm that had the pic line being purple and swollen. NOONE had noticed and it was very obvious. Yes, I was livid! I got her nurse in and a charge nurse who said they'd never seen anything like it. A surgeon on rounds took a look and sent her for an ultrasound to see if it was a blood clot. The ultrasound showed that her catheter was the same size as her vein and was blocking the passage of a lot of her blood. Apparantly kids with Down Syndrome can have different sized veins than typically seen. They also said it could have been scar tissue from previous pic lines blocking it. There was a little clotting but they felt sure it wasn't cause for alarm. The pic was pulled and a new line (smallest catheter they have) placed in her other arm. As soon as they pulled the pic, her color started returning. It is still swollen but that it supposed to go down. Other than that, she is happy and playing now. They hope to close the hole middle of this coming week.