Jasmine Stalker-Firth

We are happy to be at home this Easter.

Last night, Jasmine spiked a fever of 38.8 and after an hour of freezing with the windows open it had still not come down, so we took Jasmine to the hospital to have a sample taken of the fluid in her peritoneum. The white cell count came back at 25, well below the 100 limit for starting treatment with antibiotics.

However, her temperature was still 38.8 and her pulse was 160. The registrar examined her and said that she had a head cold and cough which would make her febrile and that ideally they would keep Jasmine in and treat the fever and observe her until her temperature went and pulse came down to 120 or 130. As it was already 10:30 pm and our dialysis machine was waiting at home ready to go, we thought we would take her home, connect her, and keep an eye on her there. The registrar and nurses, as always, were really lovely and understanding, and after discussing it at length, they let us go home and told us exactly how much Calpol to give her, and how long the fever should last, and to ring them if we were at all worried.

On the ward there were several tiny babies and their parents. Ruth got a bit teary as it reminded us of the tough times we have had and how difficult it must be for these new parents at the moment. Our hearts go out to them.

We got back at 11:00pm and by 1:30am Jasmine’s temperature was normal and her pulse was back down to 130 so we all went to sleep. The lovely nurses on the ward rang us today to see how things were. Jasmine is much better, albeit with a cough, cold and snotty nose.

We were so relieved to be able to go home that we told the black cab driver that we had come from the hospital and why we sometimes have to make midnight dashes. He very kindly refused to take the full fare for bringing us home, even though we insisted.

Yesterday was a day when people were very generous with us. Ruth had a free pedicure from the new beauty salon which is opening up in our complex (Ruth: My toes look great – not that I can see them).

This morning, we had a lazy morning, as Jasmine didn’t finish dialysis until lunchtime, so we had to stay in bed and eat Easter eggs. And then once we disconnected Jasmine, we had an Easter lunch of Greek salad that we had not had the chance to eat yesterday, and then I ate Christmas pudding.

Jasmine’s latest trick is that some mornings when she is bored of waiting to be disconnected, she takes hold of her catheter and passes it to one of us, as if to say: ‘Go on then, disconnect me.’

We have filled Jasmine’s little pink notebook, where we keep her daily fluid intake and vomit record, so yesterday we started a new pink book. This feels like a bit of a milestone. Jasmine has now been drinking without the NG tube for 18 weeks, which is amazing. And over the past few days she has been eating four or five spoonfuls of fruit puree as well.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 4:35 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.