Post-Op Day 2

As you can see in the picture, the swelling in her tongue and face has gone down quite a bit! That's a great thing! The doc thinks he should be able to remove the stitch from her tongue tomorrow morning, and hopefully then she'll feel more like trying to eat and drink. Thus far, she has not been too interested. I did get her to take a few sips of apple juice from a cup this afternoon, and she did show some interest in the apple I was eating...but when I tried to spoon feed her some baby food, she just let it fall out of her mouth.

I forgot to tell you yesterday - and I forgot to take a picture - the little gauze bandage that's over the place on her ear where the surgeon revised her ear tag excision - it's in the shape of a heart! It's so cute! I asked him today if he's the one who cut it out like that, and he said yes. How sweet!

Her breathing seems better today. She's been on room air all day, and has been keeping her oxygen saturation around 95-97%. They'd prefer it to be 100%, but they're not too concerned. She does still sound noisy and congested when she breathes, so they are still keeping a watch on that, and have discussed giving her another dose of steroids. Additionally, she does still have some overall swelling - her eyelids, her face, even her little fingers are chubby, and she normally has very slender little fingers. Her blood pressure was on the high side this afternoon, but they suspected that was because she was in a lot of pain when they took it.

Her fever seemed to be gone all day. Then mid-afternoon, it was around 100, and then early this evening, I noticed she was shivering and had goose bumps on her arms, so I called for the nurse to check her temp again - 101.7. Oops. So the doc ordered some bloodwork, a urine specimen, and a chest x-ray. Hopefully they will get to the bottom of it. She's already on IV antibiotics, so it's a little worrisome that she could still be brewing something...

The pediatrician that was on today wanted to hold off on having the hematologist see her, since she still had so many other things going on...so instead, they just ordered some bloodwork to be done. The only results we've gotten so far is that her hemoglobin went down more - it was 8.8 yesterday after surgery, and today it's 8.0. They ordered another CBC with her blood culture tonight, so they're keeping an eye on it to make sure it's not going to continue to go down.

The big mystery today is this random red, swollen spot that appeared on her back (actually, the swelling extends beyond the red area). It wasn't there yesterday. When I got to the hospital this morning, Darrell showed it to me. When I touched it, she freaked out. I showed it to the nurse, who got the pediatrician, who had a couple ideas about what it could be - a mark from laying on a cord, or maybe cellulitis (infection). She just wanted to watch it and make sure it doesn't grow. The nurse theorized that maybe she had hit her back (or gotten her back hit accidentally) on the crib rail. Later, the surgeon came in, and I showed it to him. He thinks it's a pressure sore from laying on the operating table for so long yesterday, and he had the wound care nurse come take a look at it. It was unclear to me whether or not she really believed it was a Stage 1 wound or not...but at any rate, she wrote wound care orders stating that she's not to be laid on her back or in her car seat. Not really sure how a Stage 1 wound would cause such swelling under the skin...but I guess time will tell if that's what it really is. And no, she didn't have any tape there...it's not a contact-type of reaction.

I talked to Darrell a while ago, after we changed shifts. He said when they came to draw her blood for the blood culture, she threw a major fit and pulled out her IV, so there was blood spurting everywhere and she made a royal mess! When I was there earlier, and they came to take her chest x-ray, it took 3 of us to hold her down for the x-rays. Three big, grown adults, to hold down a little tiny baby. The x-ray tech said, "Man, she is STRONG!" What a little spitfire she is!