17Sep07 - Hospital Day 2

Another long day at the hospital. Lucy was very sleepy last night although I did manage to get her to drink a little bit. Her third cannula failed at about 21:30 so it was taken out. We had noticed that every time anything went through it she became uncomfortable so it was nice for her not to have anything sticking in her for a while. The ward sister then announced that they would be putting another one in. Lucy had just calmed down and looked like she was ready to go to sleep for the night. I knew that it would be at least a couple of hours until they would have the time to do it because the ward was very busy and I had been told that they had four others to do first. I asked the sister if they could wait until the morning because she wasn't due her IV antibiotics until 14:00pm. She was nice about it but the Registrar still had to come in and try and convince me, but I managed to convince him. See Lucy's notes "Difficult father refused cannula" but I don't care, Lucy slept from 10:00pm until about 8:00am this morning which was just what she needed. It was just what I needed as well. I haven't had such a long sleep for months. Incidentally it was after 12:00pm before they put the new cannula in so I guess it wasn't that critical after all. Lucy had some weetabix for breakfast and then we finally got a chance to give her a bath and wash the remains of the vomit out of her hair. She smells a lot better now. She has been dressed all day but has still been very lethargic and slept most of the day which we think is down to the Lorazepam.
She did have some shepherds pie and yoghurt at about 16:30 and actually ate quite well although at times I wasn't sure wether she was awake or not. Its a very good sign that she is eating again. We know that you don't get your release papers signed until eating/drinking normally have been ticked off and when nasal feeds were mentioned on the ward round it was enough incentive to try Lucy with oral feeds. There is absolutely no way she is having a nasal tube. They never work very well and the stuff they put down it always disagrees with Lucy. The first blood tests came back OK, white cell count fairly low so not much chance of an infection. The chest x-ray was also clear and now we are just waiting for the infection blood tests which should be ready tomorrow but they are not expected to show anything. They are continuing with a low maintenance dose of Phenytoin which hopefully will not be for much longer. If Lucy follows the same pattern as last time she should start to come round and be more alert tomorrow. It certainly looks like she is over the worst of it, I just hope she doesn't wake up too much tonight for Dawn's sake. She has the short straw tonight sleeping on the fold up bed beside Lucy.