She's Back! ~ish

(I realized that some of you dont even know what she looks like so I thought I would post a picture of our Baylee Kay)

Well, she's back to the Baylee she was a week ago (which we thought was bad then but now we are greatful she is back to that)! Two mornings ago I was cruising the omsusa.org website to see what I could do to help H and Brit cope better with Baylee's OMS. I was reading in the “what to avoid” section. I thought it would be like certain foods or environments, turns out medications are listed. Good thing I looked and called my mom because it says to avoid ALL narcotics and Baylee was on Morphine post surgery. As you can imagine it was probably quite painful for her to be healing from that. Well Baylee was very lethargic and GROUCHY the last couple days and I said that it HAD to be because of the morphine, that other parents posted that drugs like that set their children off rather then helping.

My mom told the doctors and nurses that she thought Baylee needed to get off the morphine and they said ohh okay... but she has to have something for pain.... So they didn’t really worry about it. Mid-Morning yesterday they tried to do a new IV for Baylee and they tried to put it in her arm. They missed the vessel and starting dripping the fluids and morphine into her arm rather then her blood stream. .Her arm started to swell up and she kept saying “ouch ouch” and trying to grab her arm. They pulled it out quickly and they were going to go back in and do another one in a little bit. Baylee was off morphine for about 30 minutes and went from crabby, grouchy Baylee to the smiling, playing Baylee. It was a blessing in disguise that this happened so my mom could go get the nurse again and say LOOK she is happy and smiling now compared to the Baylee an hour ago. PLEASE get her off morphine! So the nurse believed her and he weaned her off of it all day.

Now she is just on Tylenol for pain, which doesn’t do much, but she is MUCH happier with out the morphine! They did however have to put that IV back in and it took 2 teams of specialized IV people and an ultrasound machine to do it. They have had a VERY hard time finding a vein big enough to support the IV. Baylee gets restless too, after too many pokes. It took the staff 45 minutes to get the new IV in her, they even had to take a break in between because it was such a struggle. Poor little lady, my mom says that all though she has lost her motor skills, she hasnt lost her strength.

Last night and today so far have been MUCH better then the last few and my parents are feeling more comfortable leaving sooner and they will be able to do some traditional activities tonight and tomorrow for Christmas Eve and Christmas with the rest of us.

We are so glad that Baylee is back to her happy self, even though she still has all her OMS symptoms at LEAST she is happy! She also got her tube out of her nose and the drainage tubes out of her sides, so now all she has left is a catheter and an IV, Hallelujah!

Thank you for your thoughts, love, prayers and support. All of us have really felt them and we are hoping that this time next year Baylee will be running around and all this will be a distant memory.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to All!