Freaking Us Out

Yesterday I went home and hung out with Matt and Eli. After lunch and a nap for Eli, we went to the river for a fun day. It was great. The river was beautiful and Eli loved throwing rocks in the water. I couldn't help kick a nagging feeling that we were going to get a call from the hospital because we were in an area that had no service... I was right. Thankfully, the visitor's center at the river had free Wi-Fi so I was able to connect to the internet to check my voicemail. There was a message saying that they've been trying to get a hold of Matt and I for a while and needed us to call them back as soon as possible. I remembered that AT&T has the capability to call over Wi-Fi so I was able to call them immediately! Such a cool feature!

I was told that our nurse, Christal, found blood in Ella's stomach. She told me later that she noticed that Ella's belly was looking really full, so she checked for any residual food and blood came up. So she immediately called for the PICU doctor and she found approximately 100mLs of blood in Ella's stomach. Her normal blood hematology level is somewhere between 13-17 and she dropped to a 6. What was amazing was that her looks didn't change at all. She was just fussier than normal so Christal investigated. Thank goodness she did! They had to call the pediatric gastroenteralogist to come quickly and do a scope to check out what was going on. They found that she has a few ulcers in her stomach and a bruise of some sort in her esophagus. These are probably due to the medications that she needs to help keep her blood thin for her shunts in her heart. I guess it isn't super uncommon for these critically ill babies to have something like this happen.

Matt and I quickly got home and packed up things for Eli to spend the night with his grandparents and dropped him off. He was really sad to see us go, but we knew we needed to be there for Ella. It's so hard having our kids separated... I feel like my heart is torn in so many places. It's hard not seeing Ella, but I miss Eli... I can't wait for the separation to be over, but I know God has us in this place to grow and stretch us in ways we don't always see right away.

We booked it down the hill to see Ella and when we got into her room, she looked good and peaceful. I was finally able to relax a little since I got the call. She was looking at us and around the room and then drifted off to sleep.

Ella's been doing well today. Her blood gas numbers have all looked really good which is a good sign that there is nothing extreme going on in her stomach and that the blood, platelets, and removing some of her meds have all helped. They have even decided to take the blood gas draws down from every two hours to every six! That's a good sign that things are getting better and stabilizing! After her surgery, they were taking blood gas draws every 15 minutes, so this is much better than then!

I always joke about how Ella starts to freak us out and pulls different stunts when she wants attention. Apparently she felt like she needed me back at the hospital and knew she'd get me down here by doing something like that 😉.

They requested that nothing be put down Ella's mouth (like the NAVA NG tube) so that her esophagus has time to heal. So we are back on the old ventilator that doesn't have that feature. They will do sprints in CPAP mode pretty soon to help wean her off the vent.

So far today has been relatively calm and she is able to rest a lot more, thankfully!

Love,
Jillian