Tough Decision

Alyssa continues to go up in her feeds and appears to be tolerating them. She is now at 18 cc's per hour drip and 30cc's (1 oz) every 3 hours by bottle. Her goal is 35 cc's per hour. So we are only 7 days away from reaching goal. She loves to eat and get's mad when she is done with her bottle because she wants more. However, it is everyone's fear that once she gets to goal she will only maintain her weight versus continuing to gain. Like she did last time.

NJ and I have made the difficult decision to give Alyssa a Hickman line. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickman_line This will require a minor surgery to have it placed and then again removed at a later date. This will allow us to go home with TPN and give us a safety net and guaranteed a set amount of calories and nutrients. It will also allow us to complete the final portion of her feeds at a slower pace. We believe that it will also give her an additonal boost to gain even more weight. Our doctor dosen't believe that she will need this more than a year. We are hoping that it is 6 months or less. This has been a very difficult decision but we need to do what is best for Alyssa. We don't want her to get in the same position she was around Christmas. She was way too skinny. She is 10 lbs 2 ounces now and looks so much healthier. The doctor's have started condensing her TPN sessions so that she will not have to be hooked up to it all day. Our goal is to have it only at night time for about 12 hours a day. We will have to get 3 days of training on how to care for her line and how to hook up her TPN. It will be very stressful but it will also be nice to be home. We are aiming to have the line placed Friday. So we potentially could be home by next Friday.