The Week ... Of Wild Hair

Andi's seeming to finally feel better -- yippie!!!  She was super generous and gave me what she had.  TREAT!  Yesterday, I took her to the office, as my coworker is making is first trip to Hawaii.  *insert jealous coughing here.*  Anyhow, Andi wouldn't let me put her down, of course.  So, I held her on my lap while tending to things. She fell asleep.  So, I laid her down and she slept for several hours.  I fed her while she slept and when she woke, she coughed and coughed.  I picked her up and carried her into the kitchen, Andi up on my shoulder.  And then it happened, one of my biggest fears.  She puked.  She puked all over me.  She puked all over herself.  She puked on the carpet.  I grabbed some paper towels.  There were a whopping two mini-sheets left on the roll.  Andi wouldn't let me put her down.  She's upset.  I'm upset.  Lo and behold, my boss runs to the rescue and helped me.  He actually cleaned it up!  I am grateful.  Had he not been there, it would've taken me an hour to deal with all of that.  It would have been a horrid nightmare.  We went home shortly after, me covered in goo, wearing the new scent, 'banana essence!'  I swear, I should bottle it!

Today is a new day.  Andi is seemingly feeling better. She hasn't been clingy at all.  In fact, she ate an entire container of Activia yogurt today.  It took about an hour, with a 20 minute break.  But, I was pretty dang excited!!!  Big thumbs up!!  That's 120 calories she ingested by mouth.  That's huge.  Each feed I give her is supposed to be about 160 calories, so, for her to eat a majority of that by mouth is huge.  We just have to strengthen that and make her do it consistently, and quicker.  In any case, I've come to conclude that I need to sacrifice a bit more and wake up two times in the night to give her another syringe of blended food in the night.  60 ml.  If I do that, that's at least another 120 calories she'll get while she sleeps.  I think that is what it is going to take to make sure she starts packing on the pounds.  I need to do something and I don't want to tether her to her g-tube and do an overnight drip.

Lastly, I took Andi to Costco earlier this week.  She was wearing her orange hat, which drew an awful lot of compliments throughout the store.  Then we went to Kaiser Pharmacy to our bi-monthly refill of Amoxicillian.  Still wearing the hat, we got a lot more compliments, as well as a 'wild hair' statement from some kids.  Here she is before we left, blowing raspberries of course!