Hey folks,
I know it's been a couple days, but Peyton's taking a nap, so I thought I could catch y'all up. Since Saturday, Peyton's visited her pediatrician and her cardiologist. Unfortunately, Peyton will be on contact precautions (doctor-speak for quarantined) through May 15. That means no having small group over here and no taking her to church until then too. The measure is to protect her form anymore strange germs and to protect everyone else from her drug-resistant staff germ she's carrying.
Talk about a cramp on our style! We've missed a luncheon for families sponsoring children in Zambia through World Vision, a small group gathering, and just going to church--all things we value highly. I tell you: this hermit living is for someone else.
We've got the gas-producing foods out of Dairy Queen's system (a.k.a. Rayna) and introduced Peyton to mylacon (or something along those lines), but the antibiotics Peyton's taking are giving her diarrhea. So she's regularly got an upset stomach, especially at night it seems.
Peyton's also on some pro-biotic to replace the good bacteria in her GI tract that being killed off by the antibiotic. I'm not sure what good those are doing other than thoroughly stink up her diapers.
By the way, all you cloth diaper fans, I gotta say there's no way we'd go through diarrhea with the cloth diapers. We change her every hour or two during the day. That necessitates a robust supply of diapers, and there's no way we be able to clean so many every day. We'll go cloth once her innards settle down.
The cardiologist dialed down Peyton's prescription for the diuretic to avoid potential dehydration with diarrhea and all.
Another murmur was detected at the cardiologist's office; however, with this one the plan is to watch and see how her heart develops over the next 6 to 12 months, and then determine what if anything should be done. He wasn't overly concerned, and the rule of thumb is: if the doctor ain't anxious, then we ain't gonna be anxious either.
Now, I have videos to share that I think are extremely cool; however, I suspect that many reading this will not share my appreciation. The images are of Peyton's heart during the actual procedure. They're not gory like in a movie, and you don't see Peyton's face. Nonetheless they are still parts of the human body that people don't normally see and as such may make some folks uncomfortable. So rather than attach them in this post, I've put them on YouTube so that those who want to see them can, and those who don't won't have to. The links are at the end of this post.
The remainder of this post is commentary to help folks better understand what they are looking at in the videos, so if you think you'll be grossed out, then I'd say stop reading here.
Okay for those courageous souls, here's some general info you need to make sense of it all:
1) To orient yourself as you look at each video, know that to the left of the image (off the screen) is Peyton's head. To the right, her feet.
2) Peyton's skin looks fake. Reason being two-fold. First, the cleansing agent used before the surgery has a dark tone to it. Second, the doctors place a tinted film of sorts across the skin before cutting her open. I forget the medical explanation of the film.
3) The fistula they closed is the large throbbing tube running down the middle (left to right) of her heart. In the first video, the cardiac surgeon is getting set up and establishing baselines. In the second, he is experimenting with temporary clamps at different points on the fistula. In the third, he is running the thread to close of the pipe.
It's amazing how large this extra pipe was compared to the rest of her heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrVmTWlHl8w
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