Always Changing

This morning the nurse manger Barb decided that Elli could have her scalp IV taken out because it was no longer good. She said that since it was a peripheral site and had been clotted off, it was safe to take it out without risking Elli bleeding. She used this special cleanser so the tape would come right off and it didn't even rip any of her hair out. Elli didn't even notice that she took it out, and didn't move the whole time...what a good girl! So now she is in dire need of a shampoo and style, but for now we will let her proudly display her bed head hair.

Last night when I got up to pump around 3:00, I called to check on Elli, the night nurse Angel who has been on with Elli 4 of the 6 nights she has been at CMH said Elli was doing pretty good. Last night before we left, Elli had her labs drawn. At CHM they work off a protocol that if her Hematacrit is below 40, then she can have a unit of blood, unfortunately yesterday afternoon her Hct was 40.5 so she couldn't have any. Both Angel and I were crossing our fingers that it would be just low enough that she could have a unit during the night to keep her happy. The results came back and it was just low enough that she got what she wanted. Angel actually pumped her fist in the air and said "yes". During the night they decided to wean Elli's Dopamine, she started out the night on 12 mcg and by this morning she was weaned completely off, although her pressures have been considerably lower today, but Elli continues to have great color, is profusing well, and keeps peeing like a champ.

Elli ran her roommate out,(she was stable enough to leave the ECMO room) and now we are back to having the room to ourselves for the time being. Dr. A talked to us this morning about possibly going up a little bit on the Dopmaine, but the team has not yet made rounds, so the daily plan is still up in the air. Also, the area on her neck seems to be about the same today as yesterday, but it hasn't really been discussed.

Another change is to our website. Last night Brian and I were talking about how cool it would be to know who was getting on, considering we know that not everyone that visits the site posts comments, so we thought we would put a hit counter on our website, and holy cow, by this morning the site had been visited over 600 times! That is so awesome to know how many times people are visiting the site to check on Elli's progress. Also we put a live feed at the bottom that shows where people log onto the site from, we couldn't believe how far away some of the people who visited the site were from. It's pretty neat if anyone wants to check it out, it is at the bottom right of our page. So yah, for the Reeds, things are always changing!