Mama Bear Advocate

Today I came in and learned from her nurse that another nurse had put her ostomy bag on without the protective wafer. The wafer goes directly on the skin and the bag attaches to it. For some reason the night nurse claimed that she couldn't find any of the wafers, hence her attaching the bag directly to her skin. This might not of been such a big deal otherwise, but considering her incision is right next to her ostomy bag it is a problem because the bag of course started to leak into her bandages.

For the first time I felt the need to stand up and advocate for my little girl. Most times I feel I don't know enough, but I know that this could cause major infections if continued. And heaven knows, we don't want to stay here any longer than we have to. So I talked to the doctor and he said he would address it. In her defense the counter was quite a bit cluttered, but I found two wafers with bags plus other bags of a different style that could've worked just fine. I just don't feel like she looked hard enough.

I went ahead and re-organized the whole counter and got it into a much better state. Hopefully this will help. And I even managed to have a little fun with it.

Brenda from speech therapy was there when I talked to the doctor and she told me that I was right to do so and felt I did it in a very gracious manner. That was very good to hear because I don't want to come across rude or mean. But I do want to make sure my daughter is taken care of properly.

I mean, look at that face. Who wouldn't want to protect her? 

Today though, she is doing much better with her feeds than she did yesterday. In fact she latched with hardly any problem this morning and fed for six solid minutes! She bottle-fed the next time and took 14 mL. No throw up yet, keeping our fingers crossed.