Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Update - Surgery & More

Katie is up to 8 pounds, 2 ounces. She's been taking around 500ml of milk every day (about 16 ounces)

02.12.13
Enjoying her Oball rattle from Yael :)
Even though the on-demand feeding schedule cut down significantly on her brady/desat episodes, she was still having them. Thursday (February 7th), Katie had an Upper GI and a modified barium swallow. Fancy phrases for contrast x-rays. Speech therapy decided that it was time to try her on thickened milk. She hasn't had a single brady since. It's going to be a pain trying to keep up with all the different things that need to be mixed into her milk (thickener, protein, calorie supplement, vitamin (once a day)), but if that's what it takes to get her home.. I'LL DO IT.

Please ignore the unflattering angle and focus on the cutie trying to eat my face:

Katie has had two hernias, one umbilical and one inguinal, which we've known about since at least as long as I've been changing her diapers and could notice such things. On February 4th, her doctor was worried that the inguinal hernia will strangulate her left ovary, and set her up for surgery.

The surgery is usually an outpatient one, with babies who aren't hospitalized. The procedure itself only took about 20 minutes, though the anesthesiologist's part took a while longer (about an hour and a half total time). The scariest part for me was reintubation. They had to place a breathing tube down her while she was under. They made a small incision (it's about 1/2"-3/4" long), smooshed the ovary and part of her fallopian tube back in, and sealed it up. While they were in there, they scoped to make sure there wasn't a bilateral hernia (there wasn't).

Katie before surgery, complete with IV in her head.
She did fantastic. I was worried that she would come back to her room on the ventilator, but when they rolled her in, she didn't even have a cannula, just a little blow-by. Once they got her monitor hooked back up, they put the cannula on around 40% oxygen and 2 liters of flow. She was quickly (within 15-20 minutes) back down to room air (21%). They weaned her flow down to 1 liter within the hour. She is currently still on the 1 liter of flow, but as you can tell, it doesn't look like she needs it!

Katie with her nasal prongs in her mouth.
Foot pic for Grandma! It's gotten SO MUCH BIGGER. So sad they didn't get the footprints at Baptist when she was born.

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