Long post about Chloe

This post is long overdue but we've been a little preoccupied with other things, but I'll get to that later.

I took Chloe to Primary Children's Medical Center on Thursday to be admitted so they could try to figure out why she wasn't gaining weight. Since her pediatrician called the night before all we had to do is say we were there and I walked up to her room (which coincidentally was one room over from where she was in March when she had RSV) and away they went with all the tests and measurements. Easiest hospital admission I've ever done! As you can see below we had a fun time trying to keep Chloe tangle-free with her many cords. She rolled this way and that and we finally had to pad the sides of the crib because she kept bonking her head on the rails.

Chloe had lots of toys to play with while we were there. And the doctors, nurses, and med students loved her so she had lots of admirers. We did a lot of tests, none too invasive and the craziest one we even documented with pictures.

Chloe had a chloride sweat test to test for cystic fibrosis which I knew she didn't have (she doesn't have any symptoms) but the doctors wanted to check to make sure so we humored them. For this test, they hooked her up to a machine to stimulate her sweat glands and then collected her sweat to test the chloride levels in it. Kinda funny really. The nurse running the test told us they've been doing this particular test this way for a long time (like decades).

This is her hooked up to the machine stimulating her glands.

Another view of the same:

The machine she was hooked up too. Looks scary. Sean was joking that we were going to shock her.

This is after the gland stimulation. They wrapped a little square piece of gauze around her arm in plastic...

...and then wrapped it with a second piece of plastic...

...and then it got wrapped with some cute bumblebee coban and then hot packed. Then she got wrapped in about 5 blankets and the thermostat got turned up to 80 and she had to stay like that for 30 minutes. This was all on a 95 degree day. I told them they should have just taken her outside!

Anyway, it turns out that all we found out is that Chloe isn't getting enough calories during the day (which we already knew...) so they decided to put a feeding tube in at night and she'll be getting a third of her daily calories in her sleep.

I still think she's super cute, even with a tube coming out of her nose.

Playing with some fun toys. She had a great time at the hospital this time. Lots of toys and attention, she was set!

I caught her sleeping on all these cords. I have no idea how she found this comfy but she did!

I learned how to put the tube in and just as they were discharging us I started feeling nauseated. I tried to hold it together but lucky me, I somehow caught the stomach flu at the hospital. So after throwing up a few times, I packed up my kiddo and hauled us home so I could be sick in the comfort of my own home. That night a home health nurse came and taught me how us the feeding pump at home and she told my doctor that I was amazing (glad I could impress even when I could barely function in between bouts of being sick). So we put the tube in every night before bed and let her eat in her sleep. She did gain about a half a pound while we were in the hospital and her pediatrician was thrilled about that. We have lots of follow up appointments from now until the end of the year but I'm glad that she's making some progress.

Chloe also got fitted for her helmet on Monday and I was set to take lots of pictures of the casting process but the place we went was so high tech they just put the kid's head in a machine and 30 seconds (or less) later they had a 3-D scan of her head. No mess, no fuss. My kind of appointment! They'll have to scan her head a few more times throughout the reshaping process so next time I'll be more prepared and take a picture!

Oh, and Jillian got the stomach bug that I brought home and finally stopped throwing up this afternoon so that's my excuse for not getting this post up sooner. She kept running around and this would cause her to be sick but she wouldn't just lie down and rest, and she kept begging for food. Two-year-olds!

I think I need a vacation.