Backward progress

Let me warn you - you won't read much positive news in this post. My feelings won't be hurt if you don't want to read it - I don't blame you, as it seems that there hasn't been a whole lot of good news from this blog the last few days.

For starters, most of the nurses here at the NICU still aren't good. I'm going to speak with someone tomorrow about this. Not only do they not do anything, but when they do actually do a small bit of work, we are usually upset or mildly horrified at how they do it. The end result of that is round-the-clock monitoring by us - Russell is spending the night tonight, my mom is going to be there at 7:30 tomorrow morning, and I'll be there at 11 am.

Regarding her incision, the hole that's opened up has gotten larger (it's now nickel-sized), and the opening has spread out from the middle. It's still runny and leaky, which isn't good. We know for sure that her shunt won't go in tomorrow. Because the incision is not faring so well, the shunt may not even go in on Friday. The reason is that there's a muscle flap under the open skin protecting the spinal area. If the incision gets infected, the muscle flap protects the spinal area from infection. The problem with the shunt is that if the shunt is in there and an infection in her back develops, there's a chance that the shunt will get infected, too, even with the protective muscle flap. If the shunt gets infected, we've got BIG problems. On the other hand, the fluid on her brain isn't getting better. She's not really showing any outward symptoms of fluid build-up, but you also don't want to just wait for that to happen. A temporary alternative to the shunt is for Dr. Troup to come into Emma's room and tap her brain. Yep, tap it. Like you tap a keg of beer. That will drain some fluid off and buy us some time if we need it. None of this sounds appealing, does it?

Emma was very fussy for a long time this afternoon, even after she ate at 5:30. This could also be a symptom of the fluid on her brain...who knows? She could be bored or uncomfortable, too. I'm writing this post in her hospital room at 9:30 pm, and she's fussy...again. She's been so good for so long, and I think you can only ask so much of a newborn.

I have one-upped Russell and my mom today - Emma pooped and peed in my mom's hand, and she peed in Russell's hand. According to my mom, her incident was her own fault - she didn't pull Emma's low-riding diaper up far enough. With Russell, it was the nurse's fault - she wanted to put Emma on the scale diaperless. You're just asking for it then, and of course Russell was the one to get peed on. I'm sure my time will come, though, ha!

Today's picture is of Russell with our naked baby, trying to (1) air out her poor diaper rash (let's just say she's bleeding a little and leave it at that); (2) air out her incision; and (3) give her a change of scenery. Apparently she was smiling at Russell a lot during our attempt at making our little girl happy. Oh, scratch that, fussy again...