Mom, the medical assistant

Wednesday Jillian's sickness started to really turn the corner. Thursday we were still doing nebs every 4 hours and she still sounded rattly, but today she has not had a neb yet. I feel like we have conquered this illness.  Life with Jilli, as with all kids, is a balancing act. We always dance the line of when does __________ illness/problem need medical attention. It is hard to figure out a lot of times. I was talking yesterday with someone at work and we were commenting on how many of the parents blame fevers/runny noses/coughes/ect on kids cutting teeth. It is the go to response and I would bet that over 95% of the time that we are calling parents to tell them that their kid has a fever or something else and needs to be picked up that it has nothing to do with teeth. Kids get sick. Yes, teething causes issues, but trust me it is not to blame for everything. We were joking that if I chose to blame stuff on Jillian's teeth that she would be dead because with her common things get bad fast.
I feel proud because I feel like this time we caught this at the perfect time. I know for most people their child having to miss a week of school due to illness would not be catching it at the perfect time but for Jillian that is impressively low for time spent sick. I knew it had to get to a certain level of "bad" before anyone would do anything for her,  but the trick is for it to not get so bad that it takes forever and days in the hospital to turn around. Her lungs were cloudy and headed for pneumonia but she got on good drugs before it got that far. This time we stopped the perfect storm of upper respiratory problems mixed with a stomach that cant handle drainage. There will be more in the future that we will probably not catch at just the right time, but I'm going to celebrate this one, because man, its hard to figure out the perfect time to take her in. 

In other news...
Today I got to help change Jillian's j tube. It is a good thing we had it scheduled for today because the end/cap for her g pot has been hanging by a thread and sometime during the night it came off so I had to use tape to keep the world from being covered in her tummy juices.

That should be attached to the g tube port

We got there and in the process of getting to IR I think they could have paid me for showing people around. I must have really looked like I knew what I was doing because every time I turned around someone was asking me for directions. Luckily I have been to many places in the hospital and knew which way to point each person. (Ok, that is a little odd/sad, lol).
When we went to check in they were having a hard time finding her appointment in the system but when they called IR they knew we were coming. A nurse from IR came to get us. We went back into this area between the different IR rooms. I was thinking as we drove up how medical this area of the hospital feels. I know we are in the hospital all time but that place is decorated to not look/feel like a hospital all the time. This area does not have anything to make it look less hospital. The walls are white and there are a lot of big machines. 
The nurse asked if I wanted to go back into the room with Jillian for the procedure. Brent went and helped once but I never have. I suited up in a white whole body jumpsuit and a heavy apron. I got to walk Jillian in and put her on the table. I showed them were the g port broke this morning and they got the stuff to fix that part.
Jillian fussed off and on before it started but once they got going she was fine and it is pretty quick. She just looked at the wall for most of it. As long as she did not look at the guy in the room she did better. She has a thing about tall, thin, males in lab coats. They said her tube looked pretty clean on the inside compared to most. I complimented Jillian on making it to a routine tube change. It is the first time she has gone 3 months without a problem with her tube. It normally clogs beyond unclogging or falls out about 6ish weeks in so making it three months like it is suppose to it a big deal. They were also talking about how cool her belt was and I told them where we got them. I LOVE her belts. They make keeping the tubing contained so much easier.
After it was over we headed back out of the room and I got all my fun clothes off. We had to stop back at registration because they forgot to do something and then we were on our way. It is always so nice when tube changes go smoothly.
After we left Jillian and I hit the mall to pick something up quick and then headed home. During the afternoon Dan hung out with Jillian for a little bit so I could call billing departments at different places that there are issues. I love it when I call someplace and they have no idea why we were sent a bill for something that our insurance already paid for. In the evening Jaime and Jason came over and we had such a good time hanging out and laughing.

In other news... her next round of testing has been scheduled for March 5-6. We are excited and nervous for this.

My ear is not bothering me... I'm just sticking my finger in as far as I can for fun

Daddy got me a new toy... Then pretended to arrest me with it!

I dont want this neb!

I think I am all that when I get to play with kitchen stuff