We are two weeks into home life and we are already seeing Lucy returning to the happy baby she was prior to being admitted to the hospital in June. After a couple days at home, our nurse suggested we put her on Tylenol regularly to alleviate her pain and any discomfort she may be feeling. I have to say once we started that we saw a nice change. We kept her on regular doses for three days and then changed to a dose just before bedtime for three more days. It just amazes me that children can be on Tylenol for pain management, especially after open heart surgery. I mean I was on stronger pain medication for three weeks following the c-section, I kind of feel like a wimp.
On July 22nd we had are post-op follow up appointment. You can tell Lucy has not forgotten what happened as any time the tech or nurse practitioner tried to do anything she went nuts. We couldn't even get a good blood pressure. Then I would get her calm and they would try to listen to her with a stethoscope, as soon as it touched her....crazy. The steri-strips came off and her scar looks great. It's still healing so we have to continue to watch for infection and her sternum is still fragile so we are off tummy time for eight weeks. The only change we made during the appointment was to decrease her lasix (the medication that helps her get rid of fluids). We went from three times a day down to two times a day and just had to watch for puffiness. Sure enough we moved to quickly, by Thursday morning her eyes were puffy. We called the nurse back to let her know and we went back up to three times a day. With a two bouts of throw up, Thursday night and Friday morning our home nurse said we needed to see the doctor. So off we were to the ER.
Upon arrival, the ER doctor came to take a look and asked about what was happening. They ordered some labs and an x-ray. The nurses came in to put an IV in and I must say, I think I'm getting stronger. I used to have to leave the room when I knew a procedure was going to make Lucy get hysterical, but this time I stayed in the room, held her hand and talked to her until the needle was in, the blood was drawn and IV was securely taped. And I didn't even cry, I'm serious, that's a miracle. Ask any of the nurses in the PSHU, I can break down in tears at a mere question sometimes. Lucy cried her eyes out, but once they were done.....back to normal. We spent the entire day there and around 3:30 our cardiologist came in to assess her. Everything looked okay and her oxygen saturation was good so we were discharged. Thank gosh!
This past week has been more spit ups, throwing up, calls to our home nurse and to the doctor. The worst was Wednesday as Lucy threw up three times. However after she seems great, all smiles and cooing. After the third time, we switched her over to Pedialite for a few hours and back then back to breast milk. Who knew how stressful spit ups and throw could be. We are hoping to get to the bottom of this at our cardiology appointment Thursday. And we really hope there is not a need for her to be admitted. The appointment should entail an echo, x-ray, EKG and possibly an oxygen test to get one more tube off her face.
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