Maggie Update

CURRENT GOAL: She is working on feeding properly, going down on oxygen, and getting weined off Morphine and Versed.

PROGRESS: Maggie is still doing awesome!

Meds-The bigs news is that they changed her drug intake from IV to oral! This means that she doesn't need her central line IV anymore... YAY for less tubes!!!!! They did the switch to oral a few days ago and monitored how she handled the change. Yesterday they weined her off them for the first time since changing to oral meds. She seemed to be fine with it yesterday, we will see how she is managing today! Her central line was scheduled to be taken out last night so hopefully when I get there today this will be done.

Feeding- She is sucking, swallowinig and breathing on the breast, and she has taken to it like a champ, however, the hospital feels that she is aspirating (breathing in some of the milk) during the feeds. Her respiratory rate spikes from time to time during her feeding and usually at the rate she is breathing aspiration is very likely. So they have ordered that we switch to bottle with my breastmilk thickened by rice so she can practice. The Dr has discussed this with us and is working towards our goal of exclusively breastfeeding, but we have to get Maggie past this hump. So we will bottle feed her the thickened milk, once she gets to taking her full feeding this way with no respiratory issues, we will thin the milk and move back to breast.

Oxygen-Over the weekend they made a change to her oxygen intake. She has been unable to go down to room air, so they changed the strategy. They have her on a 100% oxygen with a 1/2 liter of flow with the intention of shutting off the flow. The thought being that we can possibly take her home sitll on oxygen if they haven't been able to wein her off by the time the meds are weined. The Dr. is confident this is not going to be the scenario as we still have 3 weeks of drug weining scheduled out. During this time thy are still going to work on weining her off the oxygen its just a different way of approaching it.

THEY GAVE US A DATE! The Dr let us know yesterday that her current tentative discharge date is October 25th! Which seems like forever away... but I know it will go by fast! The Dr also feels that Maggie has been handling the weining off the medication really well, and its possible that if they can be a little more aggressive and Maggie handles it well our discharge date will be sooner!