GI results

Nanette's upper GI showed a clear path from stomach to colon - no blockage. Yesterday she spent long periods awake and alert in her big bed. She's looking more and more like her mother every day, and she coos like a dove settling into a new nest. She'd rather suck on her mittens than her binky, and I think that all the nurses have fallen in love with her.

But, she's running a fever and her white blood cell count is up. After some additional tests, Dr. Jay and his people (there a whole cadre of them) have decided that Nanette's pic line needs to be replaced. The pic line is the peripheral catheter, in this case, the IJ that runs into her neck. It is probably getting infected. After much debate and several attempts, as of Friday night they had not been able to get a new line in. Nanette's been poked and prodded so much that her veins just wont open up for another line (it's about the size of a thin piece of cooked spaghetti.) Besides her morphine and antibiotics, this is the line that feeds her (by the way, she's at 5,725 grams now, which is about 14 pounds - although some of that is still fluid that needs to be eliminated.)

Infection and nutrition are going to be challenges for a while. If they can't get a pic line in, they may have to insert a Broviac line. The Broviac is a silicone rubber catheter that runs straight to the juglar vein and then to the heart. It lays under the skin and emerges from baby somewhere along the chest. That way the dressing on the wound is nowhere close to the entry point into the bloodstream. It is a surgical procedure to insert a Broviac. We're hoping they get a pic line in.