Grand Central

[caption id="attachment_2502" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Smiley girl."][/caption]

Ellie continues to be way tired, slurring her speech and having difficulty this morning staying awake or even opening her eyes.  She is currently watching Sid the Science Kid (her favorite show because they all have such "crazy" hair.)  This time, Ellie's heart has been running high, around what you would typically see in an infant (sitting in the high 150s, normal for her age range would be around 130).  We had an EKG and echo this morning to check that her heart seems to be functioning properly.  There is an extremely small abnormality in one of the ventricles that is being investigated further (in any other case they would probably just right it off, but they want to be thorough.)  She is being called tachycardia (rapid heart rate).  She will have an overnight EEG (all these letters are a bit confusing aren't they?)  to see if she is having seizure activity at night.  So far the EEG has shown lots of slowing and delta waves.  There is some irritability on the left side (due to surgery it is presumed).  But nothing that looks at all like seizure activity.  We are giving Ellie stress dose of steroids to see if that perks her up a bit.  If it does it still does not explain why her body would need a stress dose right now and that would still need to be addressed.  so basically we still have more questions than answers at this point with a couple of hypothesis floating around.  It has been like Grand Central Station around here with doctors and EEG techs and everyone in between coming to talk, inquire, inform.

[caption id="attachment_2503" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Ben in orange, not on St. Pat Day."][/caption]

On a Ben note, we went to Target today for an emergency crayon run (we were on our last box and panic set in).  Ben and I had discussed wearing green today in honor of St. Patrick's Day.  He wore his green rain slicker in order to be even more green and was a bit concerned that others would laugh at my red coat (think Carmen San Diego here and you will perfectly picture my coat).  Well when we walked into Target, Ben immediately spotted a man with a blue shirt on and Ben proclaimed for all to hear, "That is strange, a BLUE shirt on St. Patrick's Day!"