Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Way to Go Emalee





Wow. That is all I can say! The last day has been quite eventful to say the least! Thank you all for your prayers-they are working! Emalee is COMPLETELY off of oxygen and breathing great! It was a slow but steady process that she mastered like a champ. She now needs to regulate her own body temp, eat and digest her food, poop, and pee...not a lot, right? She only has a few wires and tubes now so we finally get to hold her. It is the best feeling in the world to have her close enough to actually kiss her little round face! We joke that she doesn't have a double chin, just an extension of her cheeks. We had our first nursing session about an hour ago and she did amazing! Even the nurses were impressed with how well she latched on, ate, and then burped. My mom was the first family member to that got to change her diaper yesterday morning. Little Emalee decided that she should poop AND pee on Grammy during the change...we laughed SO hard! She is still in the intensive care nursery and we haven’t been given a set timeframe for her homecoming. The nurses are guessing 1-2 more weeks but considering how good she has done today, I think it will be sooner than later. As you pray for her, please include me too! Yesterday around noon my spinal headache returned. I was given a blood patch on Monday morning (basically blood was taken from my arm and injected into my spine via epidural so that it could clot over the hole that was leaking spinal fluid and causing the headache). The blood patch worked great until the clot broke loose and spinal fluid started leaking again. The pain from the headache was the most intense and horrible pain I have even experienced. Thankfully, I have gotten enough relief via pain management and iv fluids that I was just released as a patient from the hospital! The headache should start to get better in 2-3 days and been gone in a week. Please pray that it does go away otherwise another blood patch would have to be endured-and I really don’t want a fourth hole in my spine! The hospital and staff have been wonderful throughout this entire process...the nurses love all over Emalee. Thankfully, we have been given a room to stay in at the hospital so we are still close to Emalee and she is able to nurse every few hours. Thank you for all of the prayers! We haven’t been able to talk on the phone much so please feel free to email...more later!

2 comments:

The Keeslings said...

Dionne, our thoughts are with you. Emalee is beautiful and you are blessed to have a new member in your family.

Holly Brooke Tolbert said...

Emalee is beautiful. I am so glad she is doing so well now. You are still in my thoughts and prayers. Love you guys.