Elizabeth's follow-up

This fun picture of Matt with the girls was taken on our Christmas trip to CA by the fabulous Corrie Sands.

 

Elizabeth continues to recover well from her surgical adventure last week. We're pleased that her hearing is much improved and to clarify in response to some questions, the varicose veins in her esophagus were a mixture of many that looked "really good" and one that needed to be cauterized twice to decrease the risk of bleeding. So she still has varices, but they're stable and the treatment seems to be working. The incision made to close her g-tube site and remove the protruding gastric tissue was successful, but after 7 days under the bandage, we looked at it Sunday evening and were concerned that it might be starting to become infected. As a result, we saw the surgical folks on Monday. Apparently fistula closures are notorious for growing infections so they were glad to be getting an early jump on it and gave us special antimicrobial dressing and prescribed 7 days of nasty tasting, and REALLY expensive antibiotics. To keep track, this is her 7th antibiotic in 45 days...her poor GI tract must be completely confused.

 

On a side note, our peanut is a CHAMP at taking horrible tasting food/medicine. Her very first "milk" was a broken down formula for post-heart surgery kiddos that literally smelled and tasted like wet moldy trash...it was disgusting. Yet she grew to love it and even preferred it over breast milk for a while after we could finally introduce her to "the good stuff". She's taken liquid iron supplements on and off and that's like swallowing pennies, she takes penicillin every day, and that's notorious for making kids gag and now, the surgical nurse told us that most kids can't even get this current antibiotic down...and the only thing that sometimes works is blending it with Hershey's chocolate syrup. Well, she has to take more than a teaspoon 3 times a day, so rather than increase the volume of that torturous stuff, we gave it a shot and just gave it to her straight, without any flavoring...and she didn't even bat an eyelash! She was completely unfazed. Amazing.

 

After just three doses of antibiotics and 24 hours under the special dressing, the site looks improved and we're hopeful that we avoided a mini-crisis. We're especially grateful because Matt's on a plane now to fly to CA for his Dad's cancer surgery and will be gone until late Sunday evening. We'd definitely appreciate your prayers for an uneventful week and a successful surgery for Grandpa Harms.