Abby take the fundo for a test drive

So get this...

Kelly and I took the kids to visit Great Grandpa "G-Pa" and Great Grandma "G-G" in La Quinta this weekend. Friday was great. We took the little bambino's to the pool and they had a great time. Eddie is getting very brave and is very confident around the water which is great. Abby has always been a water lover so of course she was having fun too. For dinner that night we went out to eat and had spinach artichoke dip, mozzarella sticks, penne pasta and bread and dessert. The weekend was off to a fantastic start.
But the next morning, Eddie started throwing up everywhere. Did he swallow too much water at the pool? Did he get too sick with all of the greasy stuff from last night? No. The poor little guy had the stomach flu. And to make it worse, it all started coming out the other end which of course turned his little bum raw. He SCREAMED his heart out every time we had to change him.

Okay, so this is all sad for the little guy, but this is Abby's blog, so what's the big deal? Well, the ONE thing we were hoping to keep Abby away from was the stomach flu. But since Eddie had it, there was virtually no chance Abby would escape it. We were right. By Sunday, Abby was 100% in stomach flu mode. Here's the thing though. Abby has a fundo. The fundo is basically a few pieces of her stomach that have been wrapped around the esophagus and stitched together. This keeps the food Abby eats down which was the goal as we all know, but remember....the bad thing is that Abby CAN'T throw up, not even when she needs to. Instead she wretches and gags(which sounds like dry heaving only ten times worse). The scary thing about this is that there is a very real possibility that Abby will tear the fundo stitches.

After many hours of this horrible retching and tears from Abby, we called the On Call Line for the GI Clinic and luckily, a doctor that has seen a lot of Abby was on call. He said that since Abby was retching for so long (which was every few minutes for hours), we needed to go directly to the ER out there in the dessert. Abby was very nauseated which was causing the retching and the retching also increased her nausea. It was a crazy cycle that we couldn't stop. The purpose for the ER trip was to give her some anti nausea medication (Zofran) in liquid form through an IV so it would work quickly. The docs also needed to check her stomach and feel for any fluid build up which would tell them that the fundo stitches had been ripped.

At 7:30 on Sunday night, we took a tour of the Eisenhower Hospital ER in Rancho Mirage. (It was super nice by the way....no joke) There is no pediatric unit out there, but they were great. They got the IV right in, gave her the Zofran, ran some blood work, and just like that, Abbers was out cold on mommys chest. We hung out for a few hours to make sure she wouldn't start up again and luckily she didn't.

It was not fun my friends. The idea that she could actually rip those stitches scared the junk out of us. Thinking about having to put Abby through that fundo surgery AGAIN makes my heart ache for her. I am so thankful she didn't tear them and everything is still in place. Today she is doing better. She is still needy and groggy and clumsy but she isn't retching and that's great.

So how do you like that? Just another day in the life of Abby. I'm thinking we're due for a nice break. I hope the next few posts throughout the holidays is filled with nothing but fun updates and pictures. I wouldn't mind a few prayers along those lines if you could. Pray that Abby has a nice Thanksgiving and a nice, calm Christmas.

We love you all!