Day 19: Last Day!

Today is day 19! And that means it's the last day of our inpatient stay! It was a good day but I had mixed feelings about going home. But overall I'm so happy to be home.

The day started off with a challenging breakfast with just me and Whitney in the therapy room. The therapist was there too but she sat back away from the table. She only ate a little bit of watermelon and some chocolate Boost Kids Essentials. We're doing good with working through her behaviors and sensory issues but it's still hard to get her to take a consistent volume at every meal. It's something that she needs to do to progress. 

Then for the morning snack with me, Whitney only drank 2 ounces of her BKE and ate two Teddy grahams. She was actually way too excited to do much. Because she was going to dress up as Tinkerbell and go trick-or-treating! So we were both excited for our family to come and get dressed up and go trick-or-treating.  I also started cleaning up the room while we waited.  My husband had taken half of our stuff back to our apartment last night and stayed the night, then he took a test in the morning and drove back to camp CHOC. 

As soon as daddy, gramma, and Cameron came we went downstairs for the big trick-or-treating event. It was huge and very exciting. A little over whelming but still fun.

I'm Mr. Smee! 

Our white board! 

Apparently Halloween is a big deal here! They had costumes available in the playroom, but we brought our own because we knew he would be here for Halloween. Here's Tinkerbell and Peter Pan!

I took a ton of pictures so I decided to just put them in a few collages! There were so many people handing out candy and toys, and even some gift cards and coupons! It took us about an hour to go through the whole thing and there were a lot of other patients there too!

We had one more feeding therapy session before we were discharged! So at 12 PM Thomas and Whitney got to have a meal alone for once! Thomas had the "bug in his ear" and the therapist was telling him that he did a great job and giving him some points. My mom and I left to pack up the room some more. But I came back in for the last 15 minutes to watch the session. I thought Thomas did a great job and Whitney seemed very happy too. I know that Whitney ate a bunch of string cheese but I'm not sure what else she ate. And I also know that she drank 8 ounces of her strawberry BKE! We were so excited to end our last meal on such a good note!

Shortly after that we had our big team meeting and this time Thomas got to come too. It was very informative and productive. We went through all of Whitney's goals and she met some of them and is still progressing with most of them. We also went over our goals for the "fourth week" which is at home where we will be trying to keep to the schedule and making sure Whitney gets the nutrition she needs. We have a lot of follow-up appointment with G.I. doctor, pediatrician, and feeding therapy. Also this week we're going to just stay home and focus on Whitney's eating skills... so one more week without church and preschool for now but next week will go back to normal and try to integrate that into Whitney's feeding schedule.

I love this group photo! Seriously, these people were like my best friends for the past 3 weeks! This amazing multidisciplinary feeding team is like a family. From top to bottom left to right we have Amanda, Tessa, Jessica, Sarah, Robyn, Dr. Katz, Cindy, Whitney, Jen, Erin, and Audrey! Missing is Alyce (one of the dietitians) and Amber (the "conductor").

We finished packing up our car and we all piled in and left the building! Unfortunately it was right during rush hour so what usually takes us an hour or less took us over three hours to get back home. Whitney ate a lot of some kind of fruit stick in the car because she was hungry! So fun! Both kids took a nap and eventually we made it back home! Our apartment is covered in our luggage and all the fun extra things we brought home. Whitney did pretty good that night... we asked her if she wanted chicken nuggets or pizza and she chose pizza! So daddy went and picked it up! She did a good job eating the pieces I cut up for her and she also ate an apple and drank a lot of BKE. She also ate a little piece of a candy necklace later. It's so nice to be home and to be free to do what we want! It will definitely take some time to get used to the schedule but it will actually be a little bit easier then tube feeding her five times a day! And I'll use that time to prepare her more meals!  Please pray that our family can keep up the skills and progress at home that we learned at camp choc. And that Whitney will eat and drink more

Weight: 15.0kg