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Welcome to Alison's Page. It has been provided to keep people updated about our little one. 
Alison Patricia Green
Born: Feb. 28, 2004 at 2:19am Weight: 6 lbs 9 ozs Length: 18 inches Current height and weight as of January 21, 2009 44.6 lbs and 43.6 inches tall.
Journal
Saturday ,July 19, 2008 Ok, I know I'm waaaayyyyyyyy behind so this is going to be the condensed version. Most of you know what has been going on but for those who don't here it is .Alison has been sick since May 3rd with respiratory issues, fevers and rashes. After 2 doctors visits, 2 phone calls to the doctor, 3 emergency room visits and 5 courses of antibiotics she crashed one night after coming home from the doctors. She became dusky,diaphoretic and her oxygen saturation went down to 79I took her to the ER where I work and asked the doctor there to send her directly to Geisinger and bypass all the local nonsense since we were dealing with it for six weeks at this point. So they transfered her by ambulance to Danville. She was admitted there and worked up for various things. She spent 13 days there and the bottom line is her respiratory symptoms are being caused by asthma, which is either from the sinus infection they found upon CAT scan of her sinuses or from the gastric reflux they found with a PH Probe study. It's basically like a little feeding tube they insert thru the nose and it stays there for 24 hours , there is a thing on the bottom of it that constantly measures the PH of the esophagus and sends it back to a computer. She only tolerated it for about 12 hours, her oxygen kept dropping after they put it in so they thought if they took it out she would breathe better. Not really sure it made much of a difference but they found that 17f the time it was in she was having reflux. This is pretty significant. The doctor told me that it's over three times the normal. So they put her on prevacid and she no longer has asthma symptoms so I guess that was the biggest problem. She was going to be discharged the first week but started to drop her oxygen level into the high 80's and they couldn't keep her at 90 or above. It continued to get worse from there despite the treatment and she had to wear a CPAP mask for a few days. I thought she would pitch a fit about because they are really tight and uncomfortable on your face but she did good with it and left it on the whole time. If she gets anymore bad respiratory infections like this he wants her to start wearing it at home when she first gets sick.He said that was her last strike next time it's home CPAP. She also had to do her vibrating vest again which she wasn't too happy about most days.
There were multiple therapy dogs who came to visit, I think she met 6 or 7 of them.And she got to go to a little concert but wasn't real sure of that til towards the end. She had an instrument to play but wouldn't do it if the guy looked at her,only when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Once she came out of isolation (some crazy resident thought she could possibly have pertussis,even though the classic symptom is a dry cough and she had more secretions than you could imagine)she got to go to the play room so she loved that with the other kids. Unfortunately that wasn't til the last 5 days or so. They gave us a wagon to use too and a portable oxygen tank and said we could go anywhere on campus. So we traveled to the cafeteria and gift shop alot, we used to go outside too but she kept saying she was afraid it would rain. I don't know what that was about, but after we found a fountain she could throw change in and make wishes,than it was ok to go outside.
I have alot of pictures but the service to our computer is messed up and it won't let me upload any pictures since our last thunder and lightening storm. We are still fighting with them to fix it. It happened last storm too. While we were gone to the hospital Brody graduated from his second obedience class. He won a free portrait from the teacher who's also a photographer for having the most socialization things on his paper. It's really nice. The poor dog doesn't get any practice for these classes I don't know how he makes it thru , It seems everytime he goes to a class she winds up in the hospital. Oh they also tested her for allergies and that was negative so that was a relief with all these animals. We also got a hamster a few weeks ago.He's a panda hamster.She picked him out one day we just went "to look". He's really cute though his name is Ollie. She made up some name that wasn't even a word and wanted to call him that, I think it was Otta or something. Anyway Tom suggested Ollie and luckily she liked that.He has a exercise ball he comes out into everynight and runs around the house. Ollie has gotten out of his ball at least four times already. The first time I found him sitting in the bathroom with Rudy the cat sitting next to him. Another time I found him walking down the hall with 2 cats, Brad walking next to him and Skyla behind him. Now I tape his ball shut.
Since coming home from the hospital she had two weeks of antibiotics besides the Prevacid and Singular they put her on for the asthma. The antibiotics finished on the 2nd of July and by the 4th she had a fever again and secretions. We went back to the doctor after the weekend and he put her back on the Augmentin for ten days. Two days later we went to the ENT doctor we thought he would cancel her surgery but he didn't . He said he would still do it on the antibiotics and with the temp as long as she didn't get worse , have alot of coughing and if the Pulmonary doctor agreed. Even on the Augmentin for the past 10 days she is still running a temp between 99 and 100 mostly but was up to 100.6 two days ago. We went to the pulmonologist yesterday. He thinks that she looks MUCH better than she did in the hospital as did the ENT doctor. He wants her to have the surgery now. He doesn't think the infection will clear if she doesn't. He feels that she just doesn't have the force to clear the secretions because of the hole in the trach. He feels that once that is closed they will be able to clear the infection. He did extend the antibiotic til the surgery is over though. He also didn't feel she needed the singular anymore so he took her off that. So that was friday the surgery is monday.
She was exceptionally good in the doctors office. I think it had something to do with the promise of a surprise if she was a good girl. Bribery definately does work. After the doctors we took her to Knoebel's Amusement Park which is only about a half hour from Geisinger. She had a blast, she fell asleep on the way there and woke up in the parking lot. She had no idea we were going there. She rode a ton of rides and loves the fast ones. We went on a small roller coaster I thought was no big deal. So her and I sat in the back seat. It went much faster than I thought it would and I kept flying out of the seat. She was squealing with delight the whole time. She made me go right back on. She also got a big kick out of the whip. She got to go on some of the bigger rides she wasn't tall enough for last year. There's a thing thats a ski lift basically , I forget the name of it but it goes up the mountain and back. She went on that too but I don't think she was thrilled with it it was kind of boring she likes the faster things that whip you.
I did tell her about the surgery tonight and she's not happy about it. She said she wants to keep her hole. I think she's a little scared about it. Last week we went to her new school to sign her up and she was telling all the office people how she was getting her hole closed and wasn't going to have a trach anymore. She told them that and her life story. She's like the mayor when you go anywhere with her. She'll talk at length with anyone she sees. Her new school is in waymart . It's a different school district but they are together with our school district in the same consortium. They wanted us to send her to a regular preschool besides the Early Intervention one that she goes too because most of the kids she is with either don't speak or are slow. They think she needs to interact with kids on her own level. The problem is that she would be going to school all day four to five times a week. I think that would be too much. So this program they are sending her too is a regular preschool and then three days a week an Early Intervention teacher co-teaches with the other teacher. She'll get her occupational therapy there. She's going from a class of 6 to a class of 20 though. She'll go five days a week for three hours. She was a little upset about going to a new school she says she wants to go to her old school with her old friends but she seemed alittle better once she saw the place and we told her how many kids would be there to play with. I guess they (Honesdale) can send one kid a year to this program and they picked her to go. I'm sure I'll be getting called about her not listening all the time. She's a pip she has a mind of her own and is as stubborn as a mule. She's a little smarty pants though. I've been working on some simple math with her and when you ask her a question you can see her counting in her head. The other day she was talking about high school and said she wanted to go. I told her she was too young and couldn't go til she was 15. She asked me how many more years that was , I said "let's see, 15-4" and from the back seat I hear "11". I almost died, I never heard her do such high numbers before. Sometimes she'll nail it constantly and other times she can't so a single problem or she'll just say "I dunno" when she doesn't want to do it. I can't think of anything else right now. She is sort of looking forward to going to Disney (in the fall) sometimes she'll talk about it and other times she says she doesn't want to go. I'm sure once she gets there she'll love it. She's a little scared about the castle and meeting the princesses in person.
She wants to go to the man's house. That's what she calls the house we rented at the shore last year . She said that she will go to the man's house and he can come and stay at our house . Then when she is done with his house she will come home and he can go back to his house. She has it all planned out. I think she just likes familar things.
Well I think that's it. She's scheduled for the afternoon on monday and has to stay over at least one day. He said she will have a drain in overnight and that will come out in the morning. After that we'll see how she does. He told us the scar will be nasty looking for awhile. He's doing a wedge resection of the stoma to free up the trach from the skin that has adhered to it. They don't actually close the trach just free it up and it will then close like it should have to begin with . Other than the usual infection and bleeding risk there is a risk of a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) if she is coughing alot which is why he wouldn't do it if she was coughing alot. Also this could open up the sutures. The first thing they do is a bronchoscopy and if there is any sign of irritation or infection he won't continue so it's still not definate that it will get fixed . We won't know til after he comes out on monday. I'll try to update when we get home on wednesday or thursday unless I can get acess to a computer.
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