Jasmine Stalker-Firth

Leaving the hospital I thought that life might take on a slower pace, but so far I haven’t noticed that change. Yesterday we got up early and got Jasmine ready and took her down to GOSH as an outpatient for the first time. Jasmine had her bloods and observations done and then when the nurse inspected her PD catheter exit site, she did the sterile routine and dressing change and saved us a job. Fantastic. We recognised some of the other parents at the clinic and then after the clinic we went upstairs to our old ward to say hello. The ward was business as usual: lots of patients and busy nurses.

After that Jasmine and I wandered up to Kings Cross Station to meet Grandma Stalker and then we hopped on the tube home as the health visitor who normally comes to see newborn babies came round. She had a pile of leaflets on what to do if you are worried about breastfeeding, or if your baby cries – normal worries that I don’t have. The GOSH nurses have done a great job: Jasmine sleeps through the night and only cries if she has a dirty nappy or you are holding her in a position she doesn’t like. The rest of the time she is very chilled and sits about watching the world.

Last night as we did our usual routine of putting her on dialysis and then wandering in and out to admire her at all stages through the night, we saw a fibrin in her tube. We took a picture of it, as it was weird (as are we). Fibrins are often found in the peritoneum and aren’t anything to get worried about normally, just when you are on dialysis. They can block the line and stop dialysis working properly and need to be treated by injecting the anticoagulant Heparin into the dialysate.

By the time we had drawn up her medicines and mopped up her sick we got into bed quite late. We were up early mopping up more sick and fiddling with the food pump which is the most annoying thing, beeping in the night and generally not being very clever. I had just got Jasmine off her machine this morning when GOSH rang up needing her observations, which is something they do when you first go home, and then the community nurse arrived. She gave Jasmine an epoetin injection to prevent anemia.

Grandma, Jasmine and I went for a walk in the sun this afternoon as it is boiling, before coming home later on to speak to the dietician about changing Jasmine’s feed, and the clinical waste collection people, and the community nurse about when she is coming next. Lots to do everyday to get ourselves organised. Poor Grandma had to cook the dinner and hoover round as inbetween phoning people up and feeding Jasmine and changing after her being sick, I didn’t have time to do anything else.

Hopefully things will calm down soon so I can drink more cups of tea whilst staring at Jasmine and talking to my mum.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 10:47 pm and is filed under home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.