Drug overdoses happen to celebrities of all ages...remember?

Today has been a pretty decent day. Good nurses, good feedings, minimal fussiness.

Only a few, relatively minor events...one was that Dr. Troup decided he wanted to dress Emma's wound a little differently because he wants the nastiness to come out quicker. There's no real change in how her wound looks, according to the nurse (I wasn't here when it was changed at 4 am and 4 pm). This is a little disappointing because we saw a pretty decent improvement each day from Monday through yesterday. Dr. Troup still says her head feels full, but we're ok.

The pediatric infectious disease doctor came in, too, and she said the culture of Emma's wound has grown a trace amount of bacteria that's found in fecal matter. Because it's such a small amount, they're not that concerned about it. However, if the incision isn't healing like they think it should in the 9 days that she has left to be on antibiotics, they'll culture it again and see what's growing that's preventing it from healing.

As I said yesterday, the PICC in Emma's head is in the last resort vein in the last resort location on her body. Since it's been in, it has gotten REALLY close to being clogged 3 times. This would be catastrophic because there's nowhere else to adminster the antibiotics...so she went on ANOTHER medicine today that runs through the IV to help keep it clear. Now I want you to think back to celebrity news from November 2007...remember when Dennis Quaid's newborn twins were given 1,000 times the dose they were supposed to get of some kind of medicine? Yep, it's this same medicine that Emma's now getting. I do appreciate tonight's nurse calling the pharmacy just to check that she is getting the correct amount. She even said, "I'm going to call the pharmacy to check on this dosage just to make sure we don't have a Dennis Quaid incident on our hands." Thank you, God, for a careful, precautious nurse!

Emma officially hit 8 pounds last night; tonight she was 8 pounds, 3 ounces. They'll measure her length again on Sunday night.

These two pictures are of Emma relaxing with her daddy. This first one is the semi-upright position that we have to resort to sometimes to get her to burp. Sometimes, like tonight, it still doesn't work. She either belches like a fat, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching man, or doesn't burp at all. I know it looks like Russell's hand is on top of her wound, but it's really not - we have to be very careful to support her butt so that gravity isn't pulling her body weight and the wound down, but still not push up on it with our hands at the same time.



This one is how we'd all like to sleep - sprawled out on a pillow that's bigger than we are, being rocked in someone's lap. At least she's got comfortable sleep going for her.



Side note: I have to get my little dig in about NASCAR - I hate it; Russell enjoys it. Oh, and my friend Chuck works for Aflac racing. I've got to voice my opinion as much as possible on this topic. Oh wait, I WILL say this - on race days, Chuck and his wife, Terri, dress their precious 9-month-old son in cute and hilarious Carl Edwards/Aflac clothes that are sent to Chuck at work. That's just funny and really cute, even to a NASCAR naysayer.