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G Tube Trouble and/or Something Else?

August 4, 2009
Well it’s 2AM and I am writing to you from room 3 at the DuPont ER. We have been here most of the night trying to figure out what’s going on with Lucy. She has been “off” recently, very irritable and sleeping excessively 18 to 20 hours a day! She is experiencing pain around her tube site, and oh my if you saw it you would know why. It does not look good, some tissue has oozed out from the stoma site as well as some blood and green gooey stuff. I am well versed in the medical terminology used to describe Lucy’s condition, but honestly these are the terms that the doctors and nurses are using to describe Lucy’s stoma too. For those of you G tube experts out there, they do not think that it is granulation tissue. On Saturday she pulled on her site while crawling, and now we suspect that her tube has come partially out of her stomach, but not through the stoma. We did x-rays tonight to see if they could detect anything abnormal with her site, unfortunately that is not the best way to detect if in fact it has pulled out from her stomach. We need to do a dye test tomorrow to really get a good look at what it looks like on the inside. Good news however, her chest x-rays looked great. The fear that she could possibly have another aspiration pneumonia has diminished. Tons of labs were drawn to look for any abnormalities, so far what has come back abnormal are what we always have come back abnormal. I guess you could say they are normal abnormal labs for Lucy.
We have been admitted tonight and will have more tests done in the morning to see if we can’t get to the bottom of what’s going on. Surgery is going to come and take a look at her site as soon as possible. As for now, she is hooked to a D10 solution and not being fed via her tube until we figure out what’s going on with it. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Lucy is sleeping now and Drew went home to get some zzz’s as well as some supplies for Lucy and me. The kids are sleeping at the Puff’s tonight and we feel comfortable knowing that they are in loving hands!
Update 3:45am:
Surgery just came in to see her and they want a scan with contrast done first thing in the morning. If in fact her tube is pulled out than they will need to place a new one. Ughh…
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Anonymous said...

I keep checking back, hoping you update with good news. It seems you just get settled into routine and something pops up again. I really hope you all and Lucy get a break sometime soon. Thinking of little Lucy
Carey