Monday, November 2, 2009

Monkey Girl

The long-awaited Halloween pics of Jane are here! Forgive the quality -- for camera phone pictures of slightly blurry photographs I'm afraid these are as good as I'm going to get.

Please allow me to introduce to you MONKEY BALLERINA PRINCESS GIRL!
(Good picture of Jane, bad photo of outfit:)


(Bad picture of Jane, better photo of outfit:)


Um, no, I did not make this one. And I'm kinda wishing I had had the time/forethought to make her a teeny skunk costume because, well, come on. Can you imagine? If I can find teensy black sweats I may have to do it anyway.

So the sixth member of the neonatologist team is finally the attending for the entire month starting today. They usually do two-week rotations, but he's chosen to do four weeks to have more continuity of care. AND he came to the bedside when he saw me there (I'd missed rounds by about two minutes) AND he solicited my opinion AND he seemed to take me seriously when I suggested that they slow down on the weans for a bit, that I thought she wasn't getting a chance to catch up with one change before they threw another one at her. Can you believe it? I mean, I've liked all five of the other neonatologists, but until now the nurses have been the ones really listening to us and advocating on Jane's behalf. Oh, AND he told me to call in when I wasn't going to make it for rounds and they'd move on to other patients and wait for me before they got to Jane. I now totally understand why the nurses have all spoken so highly of him.

Jane had a better day today than she'd had lately. They made small increases on two settings (on the advice of St. Joel), and she was definitely more comfortable than she had been over the weekend. I'm hoping that a day off from any weans will let her regain some of the ground she lost last week. We snoogled for nearly three hours and she was very smushy and sweet. Well, until she had a massive blowout that leaked down her legs and through my sweater and into my shirt. (Note to self: quit wearing cashmere to the ICN. [Note to invisible readers: it was a $30 sweater from TJ Maxx. But still. Cashmere!])

The sole off note about my conversation with Dr. Congenial was that he spouted the same old line about this being a long road with lots of up and downs, etc and so on, that every single doctor has been compelled to reiterate at some point in any conversation longer than five minutes. We've been hanging out in the ICN for... let me check... FIFTEEN WEEKS on Wednesday. I'm pretty much aware of the length and bumpiness of this little ride we're on, thankyouverymuch. Why, WHY, must they keep spoonfeeding me the same tired cliches?

Awesome Nurse Angela was on today and was totally psyched about Dr. Congenial being on for the month. She's pretty confident that Jane's going to benefit from his attentiveness and make some serious strides. Here's hoping she's right. Peace out.

4 comments:

R said...

Cute pics!

I know the cliches get old, but if I had to guess, I'd say that Dr. Awesome perhaps noticed that you were bummed by the recent setbacks and wanted to try to help. He didn't, but he tried, and that's better than a poke in the eye for sure.

Sorry about the sweater...

mommatosena said...

UM CASHMERE!!!! You are sooo brave I don't own cashmere at this point in my life as I fear just exactly what happened..although I am sure a good dry cleaning and she will be back to new! That is what I aspire to in my next phase of child rearing to buy cashmere! just to say it...cas...h...mere....yeah you took me places with that.....yeah for snoogles! yeah for awesome Dr...as for the cliches....I think that more often than not we are saying it for ourselves....not for you...although we expect some measure of comfort to be given to you it's more so that we feel that somehow we are telling you that its all going to be ok...all the sweat tears and miles isn't going to leave you emptied handed and broken hearted...been there done that...no fun...and the cliches that come then are FAR worse...so in his mind it was prolly something like...."would really like to see you people the hell home....but the reality of it is that it will take longer with slower weans...but I am willing to go along cause it makes a ton of sense and you already know your child best...so I will have to deal with a slower success and perhaps some backslides that is all part of this journey"..then he prolly walked away and was kicking himself saying shit that was for the people that have only been here a week I gotta come up with some new material...and at least you are now being heard....hugs and prayers as always...perhaps I should just delete this now....nah I will let it roll!!

Cindy said...

It was somewhere during my second child's fifth throw-up-down-my-back that I swore my allegiance to cotton. Forever.

Third (and youngest) child is now 21 and I'm JUST NOW thinking cashmere would be nice for the upcoming winter months.

I hear you about the let-me-remind-you stuff ... probably just trying to be helpful during the first yada yada yada. You got it.

Hope its a great month. Oh, and monkey-ballerina is precious!

Cindy

Unknown said...

Love that you got to snoogle for three hours. Like what we've heard so far of Dr. Neo...#6. And love that precious little monkey ballerina!