No longer dry

Well, I think we can safely say that by the look of Ashley Kate's face that she is no longer dry. She woke this morning with the roundest, fullest, puffiest eyes and cheeks! She looks like a chipmunk! Fluid balance...its a NIGHTMARE.

The doctor came in and said we would make no changes today except that she may eat by mouth if she's interested. I'm a little concerned about the excess fluid because of how quickly Ashley's body likes to shift it to her lungs, but he is not concerned. I hope he's right and I'm wrong. He plans on drawing more labs tomorrow and then making a call to her transplant team for recommendations on what else they would like for him to do. I try not to call them if I don't have to. No need in stirring things up! Out of sight out of mind.

Her output is almost 3 times her allowed amount. On Monday she was only over by about 100ccs. Yesterday it was over by 700ccs. Ugh! That means we are stuck. This morning I have emptied 250ccs and its not even 10am. We desperately need her gut to kick this illness and return to her normal output levels. As long as she is stooling out in this amount she will be losing those essential things like potassium, sodium, etc. As long as she is losing those things she will require replacements of those things and at this point those replacements are coming to her by IV. Her kidneys are still sluggish not putting out near enough urine, but I'm not surprised by that. They usually act up when she gets sick.

Good news? She's not vomiting. Her tube feeds ran at full strength all night for 12 hours and she had no nausea or vomiting. That's really good. She also shows no signs of being febrile. Her color is back to normal and at this time I think she feels pretty good. She seems to have a little more life and energy in her.

So we'll spend the day doing much of the same. Watching Blue and playing the best we can while stuck in a bed. Blake's soccer team plays in the finals of the district tourney tomorrow and Allie is playing as a guest player in a tournament here in Longview all weekend. It looks as though we may be stuck here for a few more days juggling our schedules between sitting with Ashley Kate and trying to see a few of their games. I'll take the juggling here in Longview versus Shreveport or Omaha ANY day. Our hope is to stay put and manage this right where we are. That's our prayer.

Its time to start another episode of Blue's Clues and she is proving not to have a lot of patience with me today. I guess I'd better get off of here for a while. Talk to you guys soon. Have a blessed day. Trish