ABIGAIL NEWTON SMITH

Thursday, 30th August 2001 - Day 14

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A new milestone for today, 2 whole weeks old. I must be ancient, I can't tell very well as I only open eye and look straight forward but my skin must be wrinkly by now !!! I hope everybody is having a small celebration to mark this special event, I am sure Mummy and Daddy will anyway.

I am still on the washing machine, it sometimes vaibrates slower and othertimes faster, I am getting quite used to it now and no longer get that slight sicky feeling which is good as we don't want to waste Mummy's milk after all that effort producing it. The doctors have told Mummy and Daddy that the new ventilator is supposed to be kinder to my lungs as they are very stiff at the moment. When you are my size they are not flexible enough to open and close all the time using standard ventilation. This new form of ventilation keeps them open all the time, and is kinder to me. Otherwise the only other thing that has happened to me today is that the drugs they were giving me to stop me moving, on top of the Morphine, has also been stopped as the ventilation seems to be working and I am generally stable.

For those of you who like technical bits, if not skip this paragraph, my lungs are similar to a balloon. If you deflate the balloon then it takes a lot of effort to blow it back up again, standard ventilation allows the lungs to close down like a balloon and then the ventilator has to put the effort in to blow them up again as I do not have enough muscle to do it myself. This requires higher pressure to do it, think about going red in the face when blowing up the empty balloon again. This causes damage to my lungs as the higher pressures can lead to stretching bits of lung which should not be stretched and giving more problems. The "oscillating" ventilation keeps my lungs inflated and pushes oxygen in and out before they have a chance to close, obviously much easier if you go back to thinking of the inflated balloon and how much effort it is to inflate more once it is partially inflated, the ventilator can then be run at lower pressures and my lungs are not scarred as much.

As I have been put in my big girls nappy now, I can relax a bit as I would not want people seeing me go to the loo. I have got to another milestone today in that I have made a mess in my nappy, for some unknown reason much to the delight of everybody around me. I suppose that means that some other bit of me is working as well so that must be good. I thought that you were not supposed to go to ther loo and have been trying to hold on to it for days now, I wish people would tell me that I was supposed to do it earlier it would have saved me lots of stress.

Unfotunately Daddy was not able to take any pictures today, as he came straight from work to see me and did not have the camera. I will get him to take more over the next few days to make up.

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Last Updated : 02/09/01.