Post-Fontan recovery: Day 8 (Ocean Ward)

Jessica had a good morning yesterday with some more time spent out in the chair doing some painting, playing with kinetic sand and doing some puzzles. She’s not been eating very much over the last few days and it’s been an effort to encourage her to eat very small amounts. Strawberries seem to be the one thing Jessica will eat at the moment so we’ve stocked up on these! She is having some feed overnight through her NG tube but because she’s not managing to eat much in the day, this has been changed to a higher calorie feed to help give her a bit more energy, which will hopefully also help bring her appetite back a little.

She ended up falling asleep in the chair after lunchtime. She was quite sick when she woke up though and spent the rest of the afternoon back in bed and sleeping most of the time. She was given some anti-sickness meds to help her feel better and Godmummy Katy popped in for a visit which made her smile.


Last night was a nice settled one. Jessica slept for most of the night although was sick again shortly after I took over from Michael at 4.30am. Since then she has seemed much better though and has been enjoying playing with Lego and watching Hey Duggee on the iPad. The doctors were happy with her progress when they reviewed her this morning. There are still significant amounts coming out of her remaining chest drain so this will remain in situ for at least a couple more days. It looks like it will be a little while yet before she is ready to move out of high care. In the meantime though, the plan is to try to reduce her oxygen requirement and continue making small, but steady, steps towards getting well again.