Sneaky little sucker, aren't you, doc?

HAPPY ONE MONTH, EMMA CLAIRE!

Today was a pretty decent day, after Emma got over her screaming and crying fit that she had for a while early this afternoon. She's been pretty sleepy ever since. So far, so good with our nurses - Dawn, one of Emma's primary (AND AWESOME) nurses, is here today, Saturday and Sunday, and Emma's night nurse is another one of her primary nurses that we really like. That nurse is here tonight, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. What a relief.

As I suspected, Dawn was NOT pleased with Emma's nursing care Wednesday night and Thursday. She wrote out new instructions for dressing Emma's wound and placed them over her crib - SURELY a new nurse will see them there...but we're hoping for as few new nurses as possible. She verbally reviewed Emma's dressing instructions three times on Wednesday with the night nurse, in addition to them being written down on Emma's official "report card." Neither Wednesday night's or Thursday's nurse reviewed those written instructions. We also figured out today that because Wednesday night's nurse dressed the wound completely wrong, Emma's medicated wound gel got on her healthy skin and has caused some really nasty-looking red irritation. Thanks a lot.

Dr. Troup came in today to check out Emma's incision, and he and Dawn were able to have a conversation about the wound and what the wound care nurse had communicated to Dawn. I mentioned in yesterday's blog that Dr. Troup didn't seem worried about the white goopy spot in the middle of Emma's wound. The reason he didn't "seem" worried is that he was making an effort not to appear worried for my benefit. I told him that one of the NICU doctors said we needed to be on the lookout for clear, watery spinal fluid leaking out in that spot. So I asked Dr. Troup how we're supposed to know if spinal fluid is leaking when Emma's topical medicine is clear gel. He said, "Well, when I was poking around in there the other day, I was trying to see if any fluid would leak, and it wasn't. We do need to keep an eye on it, but I didn't say anything because I didn't want you to freak out." To which I responded, "Yeah, I kinda am!" So I think we're still just waiting to see if any spinal fluid will leak when the wound is cleaned out and that little white spot is provoked!

I overheard Dr. Troup say something to the NICU doctor outside our room about Emma's shunt. The problem is that I only heard the last part of his sentence...so this is what I heard: "...wound isn't healing enough for me to do a shunt." The first part could have been "I know that the...", "We'll see on Monday if the...", "I doubt that the..." Who knows? So on Sunday or Monday, the NICU doctors, pediatric infectious disease doctors, and Dr. Troup will decide if she needs to come off the antibiotics. Then who knows what after that? Based on how Dr. Troup feels about the wound's progress (there's a dressing technique that he and the wound nurse disagree on - his technique gets some gross stuff out of there faster, but we're doing it the wound expert's way right now, which is a little more effective and less risky in the long run), I don't think he's comfortable with doing a shunt anytime at the beginning of next week. Nowhere close. He may decide Monday to dress the wound his way, which will make things progress to a point where he can do the shunt, I think. I think that we won't even make it out of here in 6 weeks. Maybe it's going to be 7 or 8 :( This coming Tuesday will be 5 weeks. But like I said in last night's blog, I can't think about what will happen Sunday or Monday...I can only take it a day at a time and be thankful that Emma has fantastic nurses for the next 2 days and 3 nights.

Tonight, I leave you with this:




Nothing too exciting, but we just think she's cute. Even with the weird PICC line sticking out of her head.

Oh, PS - she hit 9 pounds tonight, and the nurses keep commenting on how fat she's getting. Good baby fat, not childhood obesity fat.