Why we pay them the Big Bucks

While Ella was in the hospital this last time, Ella's class made her a huge card, and Mrs. LauraLee tried to find our house to bring it to us the day Ella got out of the hospital. It's in the shape of a big heart and each of the kids in her class put their hand prints on it and all of her teachers wrote sweet little Get Well Soon notes on it. We just love Ella's daycare and are so lucky to feel so comfortable leaving her there every day. But, that's why we pay them the big bucks, I suppose.

Here's her class picture....not sure why Ella is the only one smiling!

Here's a sweet, romantic buggy ride at daycare....please take note that Ella and Patrick are holding hands???!!!!! Apparently they held hands for the whole buggy ride. Do they know how to hold hands at 10 months old? We are starting to get a little afraid....

One in a Thousand

I am officially exhausted. After another visit to Children's Hospital ER Wednesday night, another night's stay in the hospital, and another round of tests, I think I need about a week to recover. Wednesday night Ella came home from daycare, seemed a little fussy and wasn't eating well. She crawled over to me and literally turned into a different baby within seconds. I knew she had another intussusception based on the way she had acted the 4 other times it had happened. We immediately got in the car and went to the ER, and it was so packed they had brought out more chairs for people to sit in, and we still barely found a place to sit. Luckily with Ella's past condition they took us pretty much back. By this time, Ella had calmed down a lot and was starting to get back to normal, which made us think it had corrected itself again. Then she started smiling and laughing again, so I knew it had corrected itself by this time. They called in the on call ultrasound techs and radiologist and they verified with another ultrasound that at that time she did not have the intussusception. The head of the radiology department said that in his 1,000 cases of intussusceptions in his 28 years of doing this, he had never seen or heard of this happening so many times to one person; so he said Ella was one in a thousand. He thought it would be a good idea to admit her to the hospital for further observation and testing and to get the GI specialists involved to find out what was causing this.

So, we were admitted and got a room about 1 am Thursday morning. Ella was on a clear liquids diet all day while we waited around for the GI doctors to come around. A clear liquid diet is sort of difficult for Ella since she hates pedialite. Luckily we found she will drink some gatorade and chicken broth, so at least she didn't starve. The head GI doctor came by and talked to me for a while. It was his opinion that since this wasn't an actual documented intussusception and she had not had the symptoms (vomiting, blood in stool), he thought it would be a bit aggressive at this stage to do the more invasive and risky tests (colonoscopy). To get graphic...Ella had also been very constipated that day, so he said that can also cause severe stomach pain, especially as it travels thru her intestines where the intussusception had been before. So, hopefully that is all it was and not an intussusception again, but I have my doubts.


The surgeons did want to do an upper GI Friday morning. Apparently this test could show some things that the laparoscopic scope surgery could not. Ella had to drink some chalky dye while they watched her digestive system work; they then took x-rays every 20-30 minutes until it travelled thru her entire intestines (this took a while!). It came back completely normal. So, for now, we wait again and hopefully it never, ever happens again. Ella will go back for a follow up with the surgeons and GI doctor in 2 weeks.


I have learned a lot more than I ever cared to learn about the intestines and digestive system. I have also seen every inch of Ella's intestines and stomach up on a screen (several times actually). Bet there aren't many mother's out there that can claim that one! Ella and I were in the cafeteria at Children's Hospital Friday afternoon eating lunch after her tests, and as we were sitting there, I actually recognized about half of the staff and nurses that walked by to get lunch. A lot of them acknowledged us too, as if they remembered Ella and me. I couldn't remember exactly when I had seen or met them, or what part of this chaos they were involved in, but it really made me realize just how much we had been thru the past 3 weeks. I am just so thankful that Ella is ok and that we have had such great doctors and nurses working on her. I never knew how lucky we were to have a Children's Hospital within 10 minutes of our house. Now I couldn't imagine living in a city where there wasn't a Children's Hospital at all.

Thanks so much to everyone that has been calling, e-mailing, fixing us and bringing us meals, bringing Ella new toys (which were a life saver in the hospital!). I am hoping that some day soon we can actually do something fun as a family, because it has been way too long. Between stomach bugs, visits to the ER, surgery, and tests, and a little school and work in between, February has just about slipped by us. John somehow hasn't had to miss much class or work. I have had to eat up about 8 days of vacation time, but I am so lucky to have such a great work situation, and they have been so understanding. Hopefully this nightmare is over!

Here's one of Ella's most recent words....

Normal Routine Again?

It is starting to feel like things are about back to our normal routine. John and I are still quite exhausted and traumatized from the whole event, but Ella has bounced back like nothing ever happened! Ella is finally HUNGRY (and deciding her wake up time is now 5am to eat). She has quite a few pounds to gain back since she lost so much weight, but at the rate she has eaten the past few days it shouldn't take long. She started back to daycare on Monday and really seemed to be happy to be back to playing with her little friends. Her boyfriend Patrick was especially glad to see her and ran over and started giving her lots of kisses (more germs!!!!!!!!!!).

In other very exciting news, our hot water heater leaked all weekend long and made for a nice mess in our basement. Luckily we had a great system with bowls, pitchers and buckets. And yes, we did have to set our alarm to wake up at 2 am to empty out the pitchers so they wouldn't over flow in the night. But as of tonight, we are proud owners of a shiny, new, hot water heater. Thanks Nick for all of your fancy electric work!!!!

Some random pictures.....

Ella's new kitchen set from Aunt Lindsay

AND, after Lindsay showed her once, she can fit the round egg into the round hole in the refrigerator! Pretty exciting stuff, huh! Well, we were excited!

Here's a picture John took of Ella throwing a ball. Ella has some great aim. I think we've got a future pool shark on our hands.

Just the Facts

We're home!

I am sorry we have not been able to keep everyone up to date on everything that's been going on. Hopefully you have heard somehow thru the grapevine everything that unfolded the past several days.


We had thought Ella was completely over her virus and she still had a little lingering tummy problems, but had no more vomiting. Wednesday morning she threw up all of her breakfast, so I decided to take her into the doctor. Dr. Hodges checked her over, said the virus could stick around for 7-10 days, keep her hydrated and call if it got worse or she wasn't completely over it in a few more days. I got her home and she really started going downhill that afternoon. She stopped taking any liquids, wouldn't let me put her down, and cried and moaned non-stop. As most of you know, Ella hardly ever cries, so I really started to get worried. By the time John got home that evening from school, I had about lost my mind from holding her for the past 6 hours straight. She had also started to seem lethargic and was drifting in and out of sleep a lot. John went to change her diaper and saw blood in it and so we decided to take her to Children's Hospital. As we were packing up getting ready to go, she vomited bright green, which is bile.



So off to Children's we went. If you've never had to experience a children's emergency room in the middle of the night, its awful. The board said, depending on the severity of the situation, could take anywhere from 5-7 hours for "Green" level, 1 1/2 - 5 hours for "Yellow", etc. Ella was yellow, and we waited from 9:30pm-12:30 before being seen. They pretty much immediately decided she was dehydrated, and wanted to test her stool for bacteria infections, and run lots of other blood work. They decided to go ahead and admit her to the hospital, which I was pretty thankful for b/c she looked absolutely terrible. We had to stay in the ER hospital room for the night b/c our doctor forgot to put in an order for us a normal hospital room. We maybe got about 30 minutes sleep, and Ella would only sleep if someone was holding her.



They did a few x-rays of her abdomen, and they came back abnormal, so they decided to have some surgeons come and talk to us. The doctors mentioned something called an intussusception, but they didn't think that could be it b/c usually when children have this, they are screaming at the top of their lungs and pulling their knees up in agony b/c it is so painful. I was still thinking she was just dehydrated and needed fluids and maybe had another strain of this stomach virus. But, I was very wrong!



They ordered an upper GI, which meant she had to drink some chalky liquid while they watched her stomach and intestines for any abnormalities to see if they could find out what was going on. While we were waiting for more x-rays, we went in for an ultrasound to see if they could determine if this was an intussusception, which they immediately saw. They kept explaining it to us that basically it meant her small intestines were telescoping into her large intestines. They would try to fix the problem by doing a barium enema, which they would insert a tube into her bottom, and blow air to see if that would fix the blockage. If that didn't work, they would pretty much immediately need to take her into surgery to fix the problem. One of the risks of this procedure is it could possibly blow a hole in her colon. If this happened they would of course, immediately take her into surgery to fix it, and the intussusception. They did the procedure and it fixed it! She perked up pretty much immediately and the doctors were thrilled and we were so relieved. They did tell us there was a 5% chance that it could come back, so they wanted to keep her in the hospital for 24 hours just to watch her.



At this point we finally got an actual room (it was about noon on Thursday), Ella seemed to be doing better and we actually got a little smile from her. Everything seemed to be stable, so John left to pick us up some clothes and get us some toiletries from home. While John was gone, Ella's pediatrician stopped by to see her. While she was there, we noticed Ella seemed to go downhill again, and started crying and whining again. They decided to go ahead and do another ultrasound just to make sure it had not come back (all this while John was still at home with a dead cell phone!). Well, it had come back, so they immediately did another barium enema. It fixed the problem again, but the doctors warned me that our chances were going up that it might happen again and might eventually have to do surgery if it kept coming back.



Got Ella up to the room, John came back, and not 30 minutes later I thought it had happened again. I tried telling the nurse to page the doctor b/c I thought it had come back, and she kept trying to tell me that she had JUST had the procedure done, which of course I knew. Finally she paged the doctor, we got another ultrasound and sure enough, it had come back. At this point, we were surrounded by so many different doctors, heads of departments, telling us how unusual this was. They said they had all been watching and tracking Ella's situation all day and all stunned. They said they would try the barium enema no more than 3 times before they would decide to do surgery. The procedure worked again, but I think virtually seconds later it had come back. One last ultra sound verified it had come back. The head of the ultrasound department showed up to inform us that in his 28 years of practicing, he had never even heard of this coming back 3 times in one day. At this point, it was about 7pm on Thursday. They decided it was time for surgery, and they would need to start calling in all of the on call doctors to come in to do it that evening.



The surgeon came and talked to us and said he wasn't sure what he would find when he got in there, and so the procedure could take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. The recovery time could be anywhere from 1 week-6 weeks. He had to tell us the worst case scenarios. Worst case was that he would get in there, her intestines would have been like this for a while and he would find dead parts that would need to be cut out. If it was too torn up to sew back together, he would need to pull the intestines to the skin, she would have a bag she would need to poop out of for about 6 weeks. Needless to say, John and I were horrified.


About 8:30pm Thursday we took Ella back to get ready for anesthesia and met her team of doctors and nurses. Everyone was so nice and Ella seemed to perk up a lot and almost was smiling at some of them playing peek-a-boo with their masks. We then went to the surgery waiting room where David, Allison, Meagan, Jenny Strickland, and Ella's pediatrician were. Soon, Natalie Bailey, along with several people from work (DeLynn, Jenny, and Laura) came in. It made the wait so much more tolerable having lots of people there to talk to and keep up our spirits. The surgery didn't start until about 9:30, and maybe lasted about 30 minutes, which was much more quickly than we were anticipating. He said that they got in there to look at everything, and it turns out that the intussusception that the last ultra sound had shown, had actually corrected itself. He examined the entire colon and found nothing that needed repair or looked swollen or anything. He said they were all amazed at what happened, and even video scoped the whole thing to present at some medical conference b/c it was such a bizarre case.

They think her body just needed the anesthesia to relax and correct itself. She had to have 3 tiny incisions; one in her belly button, one right below and one right above. She should still be able to wear a bikini with no sign of a scar or anything!

She was a little groggy and fussy from the surgery, but we have continued to see improvement every day. The nurses that saw Ella the night she came into the ER and saw her the day she was leaving said she looked like a completely different baby.

We did have one small scare right after we were discharged on Saturday. We were packing up getting ready to leave the hospital, had already signed our paperwork, and I decided to give Ella a few more ounces of formula. Well, she threw up basically everything she had eaten all day right after that. They paged the surgeons and they wanted us to hang around for a few more hours to make sure it didn't happen again. Luckily it didn't, and they explained that it may take a day or two for her systems to get back to working normally. But to call or come in if she starts vomiting continuously again. They said, chances are that this will not happen again, but since she it has already come back several times, her chances are a bit higher than most. They could not explain why this happened and said she falls into the category of Unknown Cause. They originally thought it could have been caused by the stomach virus, and that is usually the case in babies her age.


We've now been home for a little over 24 hours and Ella is doing so much better. She's gotten a lot of her energy back (only took 2 tiny naps today, brat!), is slowly eating more and more, and is basically back to her smiling, happy self. Tonight she said "Ella" for the first time and started blowing kisses!

We cannot thank everyone enough for the prayers, phone calls, snacks and meals, Starbucks!, stuffed animals, balloons, plants, hospital decorations.... Thanks also for those of you that risked your life entering my virus infested house to clean my house and do laundry while we were in the hospital. You have no idea how much easier it was coming home to a clean house and clean laundry.

I think we are both still in shock and still very exhausted. I know I'll be on pins and needles for a while just hoping this thing doesn't happen again. I have definitely learned that a mother's intuition can sometimes be stronger than any medical opinion. When something like this happens you definitely remember to thank God every day just to be alive. We are just so thankful that Ella is doing so much better, and so blessed to have so many wonderful friends and family that have helped us through this.

Here are a couple of pictures we took of her tonight, playing with some of her hospital room decorations....

The Family Bug

Well, I think we have survived our first family stomach virus. It was definitely the worst weekend I can remember! It hit Ella Thursday evening, we almost ended up in the ER with Ella Friday night b/c we thought she was almost dehydrated, and then it hit John and I at the same exact time Saturday night. It was so hard trying to take care of Ella and ourselves! (Thank you Baby Einstein! I knew you were good for something!) Also thanks to my mom and David for picking Ella up Sunday for several hours so we could rest up a bit.

I believe we are all on the mend and all attempting the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, apples, toast), which seems to be going well so far. Definitely looking forward to next weekend so we can actually get out of the house and do something fun! I think we all have a little cabin fever. I wish there was a way I could just dip my house in some clorox.

I also came up with an invention while we were sick. Ella decided she loved riding in the laundry basket. But I didn't exactly feel like pushing her around all day in it. It would be nice if there was a motorized, laundry basket on wheels with straps so you could buckle in your baby, that would roll around the house, sort of like those robot vacum cleaners; so if it bumped into anything it would just back up and go another way. It sure would have made this weekend a bit easier.

Some good news...it sounds like a law paper John wrote is going to be published in the American Journal of Trial Advocacy! I'll have John post a little more about it later.


Here are some pictures taken pre-tummy bug:

Ella's new outfit that Uncle Anthony gave her for Christmas

A little cuddle time before getting ready for school

Little Miss Popular

John has the daunting task of dropping Ella off at daycare every morning. One day last week he was running a little bit late (John...late? never!) and so all of the other kids had already been dropped off. As John brought Ella thru the door the other kids saw her and they all went over to her and started saying, Ella, Ella, (some pronounce it Eya) and they were all just so excited to see her. They all started trying to give her toys. I guess they can all say her name because it is the easiest to pronounce and remember. Once John got her out of the car seat, Patrick, the only boy in the class, walked over to Ella and sat down right next to her. Ella then reached over to Patrick, put her arms around him, and gave him a hug! Patrick's mom has since told me that he can say Ella, but not Momma! I am just so thankful Ella is enjoying her daycare so much and making friends! This week she has apparently starting hugging everyone, all the time (more germs!). Some days she won't stop hugging the daycare teachers so we can leave! Which, I guess is a good thing?

Ella had her 9 month checkup last week and is a little anemic, so now has to take some disgusting vitamins with iron for a while. She was also a little on the skinny side (doesn't get that from me), so we are attempting to fatten her up. Her doctor was very surprised at how many words she could say and said she is definitely going to be a chatter box. Great. (don't think she gets that from me either!) Ella also had another tooth pop thru, so that totals 7 now.

In other news...John has completed his bar application! That nasty 20 page booger is done and in the mail! Now ALL he has to do, is graduate in May, find a job, and pass the bar! Piece of cake! In John's free time he is trying to come up with a song to sing at Cumberland Idol again this year. Let me know if you have any suggestions...last year John's version of Marvin Gay's "Sexual Healing" went over very well.

Here are some recent pictures:

Blizzard of 2008

Well, it wasn't exactly a blizzard, and, actually it had come and gone before Ella woke up from her nap! But it was still nice to get a little bit of snow for a change. We were able to get Ella all bundled up and get a few pictures before it had all melted away.