But our Ellie is writing a book called Fluid, Fluid, Everywhere and it's about her lungs. Ellie has two things compromising her lungs: 1) pulmonary hypertension that causes pressures in the lungs to be high and 2) consistent fluid in her lungs on her x-rays. First we thought the fluid was milk by mouth getting down in there so we took care of that with surgery that allows her to eat through a tube in her stomach. Then we thought it was spit up getting in her lungs so we had another surgery to prevent that. Add to that the diuretics she's been on to help take off some of the fluid and she's still got too much on board.
So today we took it to the next level - we have to put less "in" her so less milk lurks around where it should not be going. Ellie is getting lots of good milk, but the volume is overwhelming her. It's passing through her bloodstream and instead of going out through the kidneys, her heart defect is causing it to circulate back into her lungs. Luckily, there is this handy-dandy powder that enhances and condenses human milk so you don't have to give the child a large amount of milk and she still gets lots and lots of calories. It's pretty natural, nothing too artificial so we're moving forward with that.
We want her lungs to one day soon write a book like this:
