Tuesday, September 6th - Day 79 Afternoon Update

Hello everyone,

Since my last Update 4 (05:02am) early this morning we have made alot of progress. It did take us another hour to get Tori settled into her new room and finally administer the Dilaudid which didn't really effect her at all... Again, since she is so far into this episode she will eventually fall asleep for a day. I'm in her room now and her heart rate is still 140-150 beats per minute and she is up and looking at me. She has been up now for about 33 hours straight but her daily medications are going to be given here within the hour.

Tori had a rough night to say the least. It was soooo frustrating to just be by her side while she was soooo miserable... Since we couldn't give any of Tori's medications through her G-Tube as a precaution, we had to rewrite all of her medications to be delivered through an IV and that took some time. We then had to meet with 4 different doctors over a 4 hour time frame before we could actually give any medications. Then the ER nurses had to poke Tori 7-8 times to place the IV and get blood samples... ARGH!! Alright!! Spending that 6 hours in the ER just wasn't fun or right but now I am over it!!...

Since the Dilaudid given around 6:00am this morning didn't work so we decided to just let her stay up until we attempted to place the GJ-Tube once again. It is a actually a double lumen single tube so the original must be pulled out and a new one inserted. We were supposed to do the procedure this morning sometime so we waited, and waited, and waited some more because we wanted to give another double dose of Dilaudid just prior to the procedure so they would be successful. We finally got a commitment to do the procedure at 2:00pm today so we gave her the Dilaudid 15 minutes prior. Amazingly, it did NOT cause Superwoman Tori to sleep once again... But it did at least calm her enough though to go ahead with the new GJ-Tube placement.

The placement began at 2:15pm and I challenged the Radiologists to beat the record of a 10 minute placement. Darin, the radiology technician who has worked on Tori before, told Maria and I about all of the girls in Pray4Tori shirts he saw at the recent Jack Johnson concert. He told us he was unsuccessful in finding them again to introduce himself. Darin decided to play a Jack Johnson CD in the room through the entire procedure just for Tori who was supposed to be at that concert. They began by pulling out the old GJ-Tube which caused ALOT of built up bile in her stomach to come out all over the place. We had forgotten to vent the stomach contents Tori's G-Tube prior to coming in... After cleaning up a little, Peter the radiologist began to work the GJ-Tube into position. Maria and I watched in the back room and the process was very interesting. A consistent X-ray is taken while they are doing this and at certain points a dye is released from the placement wire to see where to lead it to next inside the small intestine. They repeatedly ran into blockage inside the small intestine which is caused by spasming around the small intestine. That spasming is primarily caused by Tori's low body weight. We simply need to fatten her up a bit to remedy this issue. Peter reached a point 30 centimeters into the small intestine and couldn't seem to get by the blockage. He then measured the old GJ-Tube and it stopped at 30 centimeters. He was determined to place the J portion of the new GJ-Tube beyond this and after 45 minutes he did it!! The new placing was at 45 centimeters inside the small intestine which is much better and hopefully it will stay put now!!

The awesome PCMC dentists also stopped by and they are making a new bite guard for Tori as well as a nice, retainer style version. You guys are great!! Thank you once again!!

Tori's blood and lung cultures taken this morning are still turning up negative for any bacteria growth so please hope and pray they continue to do so. Tori's phlegm has definitely changed since early yesterday. It was almost just like saliva in texture and white then but now it is much thicker and green in color. We'll see what the next couple of days brings us. Again, she is being given Zosyn anyway as a precaution.

Tori has now had her daily medications and some more Ibruprofen and she is looking a little more sleepy. She also is getting fed again through the J-Tube. We will recover here in the CMU at the PCMC for tonight at the least. Alright, once I get her sleeping it will be my turn and it appears Maria already has a head start on me :-)

Thanks again everyone and we're looking to put this behind us as fast as we can!! Back to rehabilitation and recovery Tori!!

-Tim and Maria