Some progress but still have a long way....

Good Morning Abby Fans,

After my post yesterday, things didn't seem to get much better. It was obvious that Abby's saliva wasn't getting into her stomach because of the inflamation from the surgery, because she was still throwing it all up every 30 minutes. And with the throw up came the use of her stomach muscles which caused A LOT of pain and so came the cry's for help. Man was that rough. Abby has a pretty high tolerance for pain, and doesn't cry very often when she falls or anything. So when those big brown eyes stare into you with that look of sincere pain and distress and the tears falling down, you know that our Abstar is in some serious pain. Thankfully, the morphine gave her some relief and allowed her to sleep a bit. We could get her to sleep about 45 minutes to an hour before the saliva would build up and she would have to throw it up again.

Abby still has her G Tube in and that is actually helping the situation. A lot of pain is associated with bloating and air getting trapped in the stomach during the recovery of a fundo surgery, and since Abby has her G Tube, we can literally open up her tummy and let the air out. In fact, right now the G Tube is constantly open and attached to a little clear cup. This allows us to see if any of that saliva is actually getting down to her tummy. Unfortunately, that cup was dry all day. No saliva was passing through....until around 5PM or so. And then some more came, and then some more! Woohoo! The inflamation was going down. Abby's path from her throat to her tummy was opening up. Nice! Can we go home now? Um....lemme think about that one for a sec....NO. Seriously, did you really think an Abby story would be that easy? Of course there's more to come. Before we go home, we need Abby to start taking fluids by mouth first and then be able to tolerate food a day or two after that. Hopefully we'll start the fluids today. We also need to make sure she's not in too much pain. And most importantly, we need to make sure Abby's pain is under control. Lately she has been dry heaving which is even MORE painful than before. The docs told us to plan on being her around 4 to 5 days. The 5 day mark is Tuesday. I don't remember the last time Abby has gone home within the time frame that the docs say during the pre-op consultation. If she does that...it will be a first.

Say a prayer that Abby will be able to take some fluids by mouth today.

Have a great Sunday everyone.