She is still in pain, but it is now minimal and is being controlled with motrin. Depending on what she is trying to eat or drink causes her pain to increase, but she has not screamed or cried the way she was the past few days. She gets a few tears at most in her eyes, says "it's hurting my mouth" and stops eating or drinking what is aggravating the ulcer. It is also taking her a while to be willing to try something else when this happens.
The pain is still making her "gun shy" when it comes to eating and drinking though. She is on a bland soft food diet so she doesn't consume anything that could aggravate her ulcers, but the pain she was in those few days is something she remembers, and not something she wants to experience again. So you can see some hesitation in her when it comes to eating and drinking. She will take only a few sips of a drink at a time, and only if she has a straw that she can put behind her teeth and bite down on.
But through it all, she did really good today with eating. She had two bites of scrambled eggs for breakfast, a small rice pudding for lunch, a piece of bread with butter for midafternoon snack, and a small rice pudding, two bites of rice, one bite of mashed potatoes and one small bite of chocolate pudding for dinner, and for a before bedtime snack she had a small bowl of cheerios in milk.
She did better with her drinking today too. It's not where I would like to see her, but the doctors and nurses assure me that the baby steps with liquid are great! She has taken two sips of milk or water or milkshake every thirty minutes today. She has drank a total of 5 oz of water, half of a small milkshake, and 16 oz of milk.
She was still hooked up to the IV today, but they started to lower it's infusion rate gradually throughout the day so they could disconnect it after dinner tonight to see how well she does with staying hydrated on her own. If she can stay hydrated and have good intake/output overnight, there is a very good chance we are going home tomorrow morning! Just in time to spend New Year's Eve together as a family at home!
They disconnected her IV at 6:30 pm, so we just have to sit, measure her I&O and pray this will be our last night in the hospital!