This morning, after Neil had fed Jasmine via her NG and the food pump, he had her lying on her front on his lap while he played Grand Theft Auto. She was wailing away so he said to her, “I’ll pick you up but don’t blame me when you puke.” He put her vertical and hadn’t even managed to turn her to put her on his shoulder when she vomited. We are getting to know her ways quite well.
Neil got us a PlayStation and we have been playing Grand Theft Auto quite a bit. Jasmine likes it too and when you sit her on your knee, she tries to touch the controller and join in the game. Whenever I steal a car and try to drive away I always crash into the police and end up getting shot. Jasmine pushing random buttons might improve my performance.
In total Jasmine drank from her doidy cup quite happily everyday for two whole weeks. Her vomiting started to calm down and we were getting her back onto solids – porridge, carrots, mashed potato and the like, when she caught a cold and was coughing up phlegm and lost her appetite. So, we had to put the NG down. Poor thing! She has been wearing it now, for about four days. The other day, the snot running down her nose was so bad that when she coughed, her NG slipped out. Yuk! I think she might have had a sore throat too – poor thing, as she would grimace when she swallowed. Imagine having a sore throat and a great big piece of plastic stuck in the back of your throat.
We went up to see my parents again and it was miles easier this time. We knew exactly what to take, we hired the same car and so we knew everything would fit, and it was easy to get ready to go. We took less stuff because we were more confident about doing dialysis elsewhere. And we had a lovely time. It was a relaxing break and now we are back in our own place, it seems that autumn is in full swing, all the leaves are changing and there is that coolness in the mornings. The other night when I put Jasmine on dialysis I noticed that it was dusk. I love autumn – my favourite season.
Yesterday, Jasmine seemed much better and when her NG came out we left it out for a few hours whilst we went for lunch with her Grandparents and then to the National Portrait Gallery. We carried her in our arms so that she could see the portraits and she squealed with delight as we wandered around. She managed two full feeds from her cup and only started to struggle around bedtime. In total she only lost about 10% of her feed in vomit yesterday – previously it was about 20% or more. We were so impressed. We put the tube back down just before we put her into bed as she didn’t want to drink anything else. But she was unhappy about the tube and cried herself to sleep.
So we are waiting for her appetite to pick up a bit more and then we will restart her porridge on a morning. It is all about patience in this feeding game – a bit like Grand Theft Auto.
The other big news is that Neil has fixed the light fitting in our kitchen – so we might have to crack open the champagne. The one in the bathroom will have to wait (what is three months between customers and customer care teams). We think Trevor our handyman has been kidnapped by aliens or is currently trapped under a heavy piece of furniture, otherwise we can’t account for the fact he isn’t returning our calls.