It’s Travis again. We were hoping for some progress today, but Nikki is still struggling with the pain from the incision on her right side. As I mentioned yesterday, this is hampering her recovery in several ways.

She is still nauseous from the pain and hasn’t eaten anything. While she had some juice this morning, that has been it except for a few sips of water here and there. She was actually having some crazy blood sugar swings this morning and was going to do anything to choke down that juice. She thought the half a glass would add to the 4 bags of D50 (sugar water) they were pumping in through her IV. Rightfully so. Her blood sugar had dropped to as low as 30!!! The CF related diabetes seems to be a little difficult to control. All the ‘roids, meds & trauma have her sugar levels on a runaway roller coaster ride. The nurses are doing their best to control it, but she knows her body better than the charts know how she reacts.
They tried to put in a NG tube (feeding tube) this morning. No luck. Just pain. So they wheeled up this high tech ultrasound machine where they put in some fluoro dye to help place the feeding tube. According to the doc, “they’ll get it done with this thing.” They didn’t. Our girl doesn’t have a lot of excess fat to burn if she’s not eating for 5 days. She needs to start eating.

She can’t get comfortable because of the incision pain and some muscular pain in her back that’s also proven to be uncontrollable.
No comfort. No sleep. No good.
She still hasn’t slept since they took her off the propofol Wednesday morning. They kicked her mom and me out of the room. We’re hoping this will help her sleep a little now.

Since the docs and nurses are spending most of their time trying to control the pain and comfort her, she’s had no time to work on her physical therapy. Other than the one time in the chair yesterday, she hasn’t been out of bed. We need her to start moving around.

They have a plan, but haven’t begun to address the blood clots.

On the bright side, they removed 3 of the drain tubes protruding from her chest. They were draining the excess fluid in her lung cavity. She’s down to just 2 drain tubes now. Hopefully, this will help reduce some of the pain.

She’s been doing great with her lung exercises and her oxygen stats are consistently at 99% or better. She’s supplementing with 2 liters of oxygen for now. That’s pretty good they say.

Clinically, they think the new lungs are doing well. They just need to address those other issues to get her healing quicker.

The outpouring of messages and texts is overwhelming. Please don’t be offended if we can’t respond. Your messages are GREATLY appreciated. The Dumonceaux and Malnar families feel blessed to have such wonderful support!