Discharge Slow Motion

Yesterday was one of the harder days so far.  However, today is discharge day!  It also turns out that our friend Lydia Dansby is also getting discharged today too.  Angela, Lydia's mom and I shared a discharged high-five.  Now it's time for time to slowwwww down to a trickle.  Every minute will feel like an hour as you wait for those final words and discharge instructions. 

To pass the time I'd like to add how much last night sucked to the blog for posterity.  Monday we were fighting getting her to drink and eat.  They had given us goals of 30 oz.  They said that was the only thing keeping us from discharge.  We worked hard at it but she missed her goal by about 10 oz.  It's hard to have your goal right there in front of you and see her struggling so hard to understand why she needs to drink.  With her so low on fluids they gave her IV fluids that night. 

Tuesday's IV fluids from midnight to 6am,  led to a tuesday of not wanting to eat or drink even more so than Monday.  It just takes the thirst out of you.  We spent the day saying, "you want juice," "you want to eat," "drink this," "try this."  We were all frustrated with each other.  To break up all the fun we were having her discharge echo was done; they do an echo on everyone before they can leave.  She finally has logged her worst echo ever in the record books.  She cried and screamed the whole time with "owwie's."  The only reprieve was when the radiologist would turn the sound on and she could hear her echo through the echo.  She wouldn't even take the typical echo lollipop.  We were freaking out thinking we had a full on oral aversion.

The day got worse when they told us the echo results.  They told us at the time she had fluid around her heart and would needs extra meds and some iv diuretics that night.  The extra meds turned out to be 40ml's of chloride, kinda of like salt but not really.   For a girl not drinking anything this seemed monumental.  I hope Olivia can forgive us, but we had to force it down without having her puke.  We flavored the 40mls with coke icee, she drank the first bit.  Then we had to lay her down and hold her head and arms and squirt in 160 ml's of good tasting medicine.  We spaced each 20ml syringe by about 10 or 15 minutes with a twizzler in between.  She gagged and spit a little, even once clenching her teeth and an explosion of medicine hitting melanie in the face and hair (it was pretty funny).   With the forced medicine and juice she had just enough they didn't do the nighttime fluids and they got a pretty good night of sleep.  It was quite a traumatic experience for all of us.  A good night sleep for all 3 of us brought a much better day.

In the future when Olivia reads this, hopefully she can forgive us.  It was quite the battle but it was for her own good.  Now we are getting discharged and just waiting as the minutes tick by.  Our nurse is taking her time but it will come.  We just got her down for a nap, after eating.  She's a new girl today wanting 2 packs of fruit snacks, chips, and she downed 10oz of sprite plus 6oz of juice.  She's a different lady today, and while she has a lot of bad eating/drinking habits now hopefully we'll get her back to normal and just a few snacks and sips of sprite here and there. 

In a nutshell yesterday sucked horribly and we were all at our emotional threshold.  Today was a great reward for the night we had.  Thanks CHOP but we are ready to go!