Thursday, October 23, 2008

Erin Update -- 10:30 PM

Erin's day never got better. She never was able to eat anything other than a little applesauce, and a few sips of chicken broth. She has been good about trying to get water and Gaterade down. The good news is she only vomited the one time, but she has been uncomfortable all day and feeling achy. Shje neded up with a fever tonight of 102.1. Deb contacted the ENT on duty at Stanford and talked with her. The ENT talked with another doctor on duty and they felt after asking a lot of questiopns of Deb and then Erin, that the fever most likely was unrelated to the surgery. We started her on Tylenol and I bathed her with cool washclothes for a few hours until she felt comfoitrtable and the fever started going down. The last time Deb checked it, about 15 minutes ago, it was down to 100.6.

Not to alarm anyone but one of the things that can happen after this surgery is meningitis. Erin had it when she was alittlr girl so Deb knows the signs to look for. If we see any of those signs, or if her fever hadn;t gone down or goes back up and won't go down, we are to take her to the ER and they will probably do a spinal tap. We are encouraged though that the fever is going down as well as it is, and that Erin seems to be feeling alright other than having no energy as we do when running a fever and achy. We just keep encouraging her to drink water and try as hard as we can to get her comfortable.

We brought the recliner downstairs for her but she neded up not finding it as comfortable as she thought she would. She didn;t want to go back in the bed she slept in last night, so she is on the couch. She prefers to be sitting up and we have mahed that quite well. It's her lower back and rearend that get sore and has to keep trying to get in a more comfotable position. If she could just lay down comfortably I think she would sleep much better, but when she gets down (by removing one pillow at a time) she gets stuck and can't get back up.

We are of course hoping that by morning Erin will be feeling much better and we can get back to getting some food into her. Erin always functions better when she has a satisfied tummy.

I hope I have something more positive to report in the morning.

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Don't we all feel better when we are well fed??

Hope today goes better.

On the bright side, at least you are at home now and not still in the hotel.

Unknown said...

I do hope that today is a better one. Have you thought about the possibility of renting a hospital bed if Erin continues to be uncomfortable in bed or on the couch? Looking forward to positive news. Lots of love and hugs, Vaden