hopefully home tomorrow...

as you may or may not recall, miss lyncoln decided to pay the nicu yet ANOTHER visit on easter sunday. since they have exhausted all of their answers surrounding her reflux issues, they transported her to children's hospital in pittsburgh last monday. instead of heading back to work, c followed the ambulance to the hospital, and stayed with our little girl until today. on friday, i packed the chicken, quinn and myself up and headed to be with our little family. we have been staying in the ronald mcdonald house (or, as the chicken calls it, the 'ronnie donnie house'), and, i have to say how fortunate we are. there are families who have been waiting weeks to be able to stay here. we are so very grateful.

anywho, after a TON of tests, the unanimous result is that lyncoln has gerd. really, really bad reflux. the neurologist wanted her to have surgery- to the tune of a g-tube and a nissen (a mic-key button in her tummy to deliver whatever food she doesn't take by mouth and to 'vent' her, and the nissen is where they wrap a portion of her stomach around her esophagus, thus eliminating the reflux, but not allowing her to spit up or have gas). after crying and begging the doctors to try something less intrusive, they decided to give a med combo a whirl. AND. IT'S. WORKING. she is on prevacid and pepsid. her feeds are also thickened. she has been gaining weight, and is now a bit over 8 lbs.

i'm not happy with the neurologist. at all. it turns out that lynci's mri showed mild pvl- holes in her brain. he thought that maybe her feeding issues were because of this. had he asked us, we could have told him how lync was ALWAYS a much better eater than quinn, until her reflux flared up. even then, she anxiously latched on to eat, but it hurt so badly to swallow, that she didn't want to. she has always steadily gained weight, so that wasn't the problem. the issue was the pain caused her to brady and desat. c and i thought that if the pain was alleviated, then the brady's and desats would be, as well. so far, so good!

back to the pvl... it is so mild, that we never would have known about it had she not had an mri. it never showed up in her head ultrasounds, and it's NOT cystic, NOR is it progressive. it is so mild, that the doctors believe that she will not have any issues, but she will be carefully monitored to make sure that she is hitting all of her developmental milestones... which means that everything that we are doing, we will continue to due, while adding a double dose with the pittsburgh folks. when i asked about quinn, the neurologist admitted that this was a unique situation, but that there is no reason to give her an mri, especially with the non-severity of lync's. he also commented on how good her tone, strength, alertness, head control, etc. is. whew!

originally, we were going to be here over a month, but since the med combo is working, we should be going home tomorrow. we actually were going to go home today, but lynci has a bit of a cough, and would throw up and brady a bit when she had a coughing fit, so they chose to keep her one more night. this evening she had her car seat test and tomorrow morning she will have her eye exam.

i so cannot wait to have our little family together again.