Daddy’s Little Pit Bull

Apparently Skyler is one of feistiest kids on this floor, according to one of her respiratory therapists. I’ve mentioned how she hates her breathing treatments, but let me describe it in a little more detail. They take her oxygen mask and attach this black bag/balloon thing to it and then they squeeze the baloon thing so that it puffs air into her chest to help encourage deeper breaths. It takes 5 – 10 minutes of a constant rhythm of that, and then when they are done, they suction out her sinuses and drainage.

As soon as they put the mask on her face, she starts yelling. Now that her lungs are functioning better, she’s able to get some good screams in, but it gets muffled into the mask. She flails her arms and legs as she fights the treatment. Sometimes she will take her hands and just pry at the therapist’s fingers, digging her nails into them and trying to pull the mask off. The therapist even noticed that she’s found a way to turn her mouth to the side and “cheat” by getting air from a gap where the mask doesn’t touch her face.

This one therapist has worked with her several times since her surgery, and she said she just gets a kick out of her feistiness. She actually enjoys coming in here to do her treatments because she says Skyler gives her the most exciting treatment experience of the day. She said she is one strong, fighting little girl. I guess that’s a good thing that she puts up so much of a fight. It means she’s strong when she wants to be. But I think it pretty much wears her out because she’s usually out like a light as soon as the therapist leaves the room.

This morning they started feeding her formula through a tube that goes down her nose into her stomach. She was in too much discomfort when we tried feeding her from the bottle, but they said she needs to be getting those calories instead of the IV fluids. They’ve also increased her oral heart medicine and decreased her IV heart meds to try weaning her again. So far, her vitals are looking really good. Even her heartrate and respiratory rate are looking much better today than they have since surgery. Hopefully this means we are making some progress, but I won’t hold my breath. We’ll just see how the day goes!