The Flu Has Taken Over

Since the last post it has been a crazy time in our house. Annabel appeared to be doing well last Thursday morning but then after lunch projectiled everywhere again, so I knew I needed to take her back to the ER to make sure everything was okay. In the meantime B.J. decided to come home from his trip early because it was unclear what help was going to be needed, when and where and my parents had a lot of appointments planned for Friday, including some doctors appointments. All of Annabel's head scans came back fine, the shunt looks like it's working properly so her irritability/fussiness with drinking was chalked up to still fighting the flu/surgery.

Friday was a pretty good day. Mady and Johnathan appeared to be doing quite a bit better, happy and actually playing quite a bit. Saturday, however, they were spunky again, didn't want to eat or play and just wanted to be held and sleep. Saturday night B.J. came down with the flu so my parents came back up Sunday to help me again. Yesterday Johnathan threw up again at breakfast and today Mady threw up at breakfast but both are eating and drinking again now, although they still aren't playing much and want to be held A LOT. Annabel has been drinking a lot better (we figured out she needs a lot of extra burping, which I think the zantac is helping) and is almost back to full solids and is a lot happier so hopefully we're turning the corner!

We took Annabel to the pediatricians today for her follow-up from the shunt replacement and poor thing is down to 16lbs 8ozs, she was 18lbs before the surgery! So we are working to get her back on pediasure and to full solids. Dr. Gessner said that this flu could last up to 10 days, which for us it's been at least a week already. Dr. G. did look up her cultures and as of this morning both the catheter tip and the csf fluid read final read - negative!!! I will find out for sure on Thursday, because they had said it could take up to 2 weeks to grow but from what the reports said it appears that they're negative and the failure really was due to something mechanical, what a blessing that would be! Hopefully that means this shunt will last MUCH longer!!

Here is a slideshow of pics from the last week, fighting thru the flu. There was a lot of cuddling, some play time, and yes, Johnathan even had to wear pink pj's at one point!!


Flu Slideshow