YES! There is a Wednesday song. And the Bug is pretty woeful today. But hopefully things will start to get better soon!

Leah had her esophagram this afternoon. They wound up not doing a second chest x-ray since they could see some of what they needed to see via the esophagram. There is no evidence of leakage from the surgical site, though there does seem to be a little bit of stricture (which is to be expected from what I’ve read). The dye easily passed into the stomach, though, so hopefully that doesn’t mean a dilation is in Leah’s near future. On the bright side, I learned today that dilations are done non-surgically (more like an endoscopy), so that’s a big relief.

The verdict is still out on whether or not Leah has pneumonia. The surgeons were concerned about a section on her x-ray that looked like it could be the beginning of pneumonia, whereas the doctor from Infection Control thought her symptoms were more about recovering from the extubation and deflation in her lungs. The PICU doctors are more concerned about the potential for an infection in her central line or her surgical site. The bottom line is that they took the blood and sputum cultures and she is receiving antibiotics while they wait for the results, which take at least 48 hours. She’s also getting CPT, a therapy she hasn’t gotten since NICU – officially. Basically they tap her back with cupped hands or a little device they use, on either side of her spine, to loosen secretions in the lungs so she can cough them out. It also helped loosen the secretions she had with the repogle, so we’ve kept it up ourselves and she LOVES IT. Puts her right to sleep. So the respiratory therapist let Mandy help with the CPT this evening – which in this case means that Mandy held her while the RT did the therapy. So…. BabyPie got a taste of Mommyshoulder tonight. She was SO HAPPY.

And finally… tonight they began BabyBug on 5cc of breast milk each hour, continuously through the g-tube. Back to the start!