Blood, Shoes and Diapers

A lot of regular and basic stuff has been going on since I last posted. Caleigh continues to wiggle around and she is getting used to it. Not crying as much and more pleased when she actually gets to her destination. I'll have to get more video of it soon.

We went and did labs last Thursday. You know the old joke "How many people does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Well it seems it takes an army to draw blood from Caleigh. If they aren't intelligent lab people....it's takes a the whole country and their army! Needless to say they finally got the blood, but when we got the results the numbers were all crazy because it hemolyzed in the process of them drawing it. I got a frantic call at 9 o'clock at night from the GI on call making sure Caleigh was still alive. We will not be going back to that lab.

Friday we took Caleigh to the GI office. Everything including the dumping syndrome is looking good. All except the blood in her stool. We did an in office stool test...20 seconds later.....jackpot, blood in her stool. I swear it's really like going to Vegas everytime we do the test. Anyways, there could be a couple of reasons this is still happening. One being a food allergy that irritated her intestinal tract so bad that it still hasn't recovered. The other explanation is that the bacterial overgrowth still isn't under control. Caleigh is on a very hypoallergenic formula and hasn't had anything by mouth since leaving the hospital. We are still waiting on the allergy tests to come back as well. So we opted for the second theory and started a 2 week dose of Flagyl. Blood counts are good so no problems from losing the blood. We have a GI appt. scheduled for 2 weeks to re-check the stool.

Last week our PT suggested we get some hard soled shoes for Caleigh and preferably with an arch. This will hopefully help her toes relax and lay down with the feedback given by the sole of the shoe. So we loaded Caleigh up in the VAN (a whole other blog post to come) and went to the mall. We quickly learned that toddler size 3 shoes rarely have an arch. So we went through the whole mall sticking our fingers in itty bitty shoes looking for that illusive arch. Just when we had given up we came across these beauties, quickly snatched them and headed home. Caleigh has taken to wearing shoes wonderfully. No complaining at all. The weight of them seems to make her notice her feet and legs more. They don't stick straight out in a seated position while wearing them. She doesn't sport the new shoes all day but her big toe seems relaxed after wearing them a few hours. I think these are a good start. Caleigh will probably need AFO's in the future, but for right now this is progress.

K-Swiss with a little bling

Right before Caleigh went into the hospital we received a donation of over 1000 diapers from the DFW Charity Racing League. You may remember they have raised diapers for Caleigh before. Lord knows we need them! They are an amazing group of people who selflessly think of others and for that we are forever grateful. We really are humbled by such generosity. Thanks Guys!

I thought this picture was funny. She's trying to chew on the bag. Caleigh seems to be teething some more. There is ponds of spit everywhere. No joke we go through 3 cloth diapers a day just wiping it up. Her mouth is all over everything. It's crazy. I wish her teeth would just come in and be done. I promise not to complain when they all fall out and her permanent teeth start to emerge. Promise.