Still truckin!!

Ella had a bit of a blurp in the healing world. She developed an infection. She was a crank pot on Saturday and on Sunday morning her nurse really just did not think Ella was herself and thought something was up. Her nurse is Ella's primary nurse and whenever she is at work, Ella is one of her two patients. This is great because she is really aware of how Ella is because she works with her a lot! Anyways, they ran some labs on Ella and she had a slightly elevated white blood cell count, indicating an infection so they promptly started her on some antibiotics. We were pretty certain that it had something to do with her angry looking g tube site. The cultures started coming back showing that she actually has a UTI. Poor girl!!! They actually caught this infection very early on and by Sunday evening she was perking up a bit and she looked and acted like her happy little self today. She will continue with the antibiotics tomorrow and it will be decided what we are going to do next. They are also going to draw some labs on her thyroid as those levels on her Missouri newborn screening came back a bit high. If they are, they will start her on some thyroid meds and continue to monitor on an out patient basis. They reassured me that this is actually very common with their NICU babies. On a good note, she did take 30 mLs out of her bottle today. That is a big deal!!! AND she did not really drool a lot of it. Her OT was shocked and VERY excited about it!!! I was as well!!! This is her personal best. Now she just needs to keep it up. She is swallowing a lot better with that tube out of her throat so I am sure that helps with the drooling, and we have to trick her into putting her tongue down, but it is a GINORMOUS improvement from last week. Today they started her back on LASIX as she is just not quite ready to be rid of that drug. It is helping her to more effectively deal with the extra fluid. She still has a tendency to breath quickly but not hard. They would like for her to be more consistently below 60, which she is slowly working on. She is not in the 70's anymore so this is great! By her being on this particular medication, it does qualify her to get the RSV shot. I am relieved about since we are going into the season. I hope that will be a helpful preventative in addition to her bubble to keep her from getting sick! That is right....she is officially bubble baby....some of which are actually doctors orders!!!
Her next big step is to do her car seat test. She has to make sure that her heart rate does not dip down below 80 and her breathing stays within a decent rate. I am sure she will be fine with this test.