Yes, after 141 days in the NICU, we’ve finally been given a date by the doctors for Zoe Beth to come home. We’re expecting her to be discharged in two weeks on Monday, June 28th, a few days past her five month birthday. Obviously, the date’s not set in stone, but we feel very optimistic that everyone will be ready by then.
So what’s been happening the past week? Well, Zoe’s been recovering from her surgery to correct a reflux problem, as well as have a gastrostemy tube inserted into her tummy for feedings. I didn’t have a chance last week to go into details, but there were a few additional procedures thrown in during her surgery. When they had Zoe’s tummy opened up, the surgeon noted that there was a malrotation in Zoe’s small intestines – meaning a small section was twisted the wrong way. It’s not believed that this was causing Zoe any issues at the time; however, it could have led to some serious problems down the road, so we’re very thankful that it was caught. So how do you fix a twisted intestine? Well, you have to pull the entire intestines out of the body, pile them up on the patient’s belly, untwist the section, and stuff them back in. Oh…and the surgeon decided to go ahead and take out her appendix for good measure.
Zoe had no problems recovering from her surgery. She is almost back to her full feeding schedule, and her vent settings are back to where she was just prior to the surgery. During the week, Zoe made it to over 10 pounds. Today Zoe was moved to a home ventilator; this machine will come home with her, and is more portable and parent friendly. We expect her vent settings to be moved to full CPAP tomorrow. It doesn’t sound like the doctors are going to attempt to move her to the artificial nose before she comes home, so it looks like she’ll be on CPAP fulltime through the next several weeks. Also in the past week, mom and dad have taken trache care and CPR class to prepare us for life with a trache baby. In the coming week, we expect to learn how to care for the feeding tube.
So what’s Zoe coming home with? As mentioned above, she will very likely still be hooked to the ventilator machine. She will also be receiving her feeds through the feeding tube inserted into her stomach. While it hasn’t been finalized yet, it appears we will have some form of assistance from a home health service.
That’s all we know at this point. We’ll let you know if anything changes before then.
Thanks for all of your continued prayers and support. We’ve still got a long ways to go in getting Zoe to where we want her, but at least we’ll be able to do if from home very soon.
