Drinking Games

Sorry for the pun, I just couldn't resist.

Cuddling

A few nights ago I found this work of art. For a mom whose primary job while in the hospital is to make sure her daughter is drinking enough liquids, this is a masterpiece! It's this tricky thing, she needs to be drinking a minimum of 32oz/day. She also needs to be eating, but it's hard to eat when your tummy is full of water and you're not feeling thirsty because you're on IV fluids. So, we make games of out of it.

So far we have five main drinking games, please leave your ideas below. The oncology doctor today said we would get kicked out of the hospital if anything involved a red solo cup.

1. Cheers...we've all done it...tinked our glasses and said "Cheers!" and then took a drink. We've both found hydration successful through this tried & true celebratory event.

2. Glug, Glug. You know when the water cooler is dispensing the water and it glugs? Esther can make some awesome glugs with her princess water cup.

3. The Fish Game. There is a pretty incredible ball machine in the lobby of the hospital. It has tons of cause and effect events that make a ball move through a series of twists, turns & jumps. We like the red lipped fish. Everytime the fish eats a ball, Esther takes a drink.

4. There are some fun paths in front of the hospital with pretty landscaping. In the grass are some cement squares that make a path out to some small trees. In this game one of us jumps from square to square. When landing on a square, Esther takes a drink. If she's the jumper, it's totally adorable. When I'm the jumper, the people looking out their windows must think there's some crazy lady doing very uncoordinated exercise on the cement squares. But Esther sits in her stroller taking drinks and tells me good job when I land.

5. Turn the corner or go under a door. When on a stroller ride or walk every time we turn or go through a door, Esther must take a drink. That was our game tonight as we needed to stay close to our room. We did sneak down to take a peek at the ball machine.

Esther also likes to take "big girl" drinks. That means straight from the milk carton, cafeteria style. No pushing a straw through the side, junk. This is the real deal, folks.

Esther wasn't feeling great today. She was really, really stopped up and they've given her the full regime to try to flush her system. She ate apple sauce, drank apple juice, had fig neutons, no milk or salty stuff and lots of fruit in addition to meds to help it all along, the goal is to flush her system. She also had a fairly high fever most of the day and was just sleepy.

She perked up about 3 this afternoon and has been fever free since about 2pm. She will have an x-ray tomorrow morning to determine if her bowels have cleared enough to go home. If she's both fever free and and more regular, we might get to go home tomorrow.

Her ANC was 660 this morning, so they aren't so worred about infection that might pop up because she's got something to fight it with.

I overheard a sweet conversation outside our door today. The resident doctors were doing their rounds and I heard one doctor ask a nurse we had for several days last week if he had "sweet little Esther." He said, "I wish, but she (another nurse) got her." Then I heard the resident doctor say, "Oh man! I wanted to see her today, but I guess she's (the other resident doc on the floor) got her." About 15 minutes later they both came in to look & listen and confessed they both wanted to see Esther and decided they would share the job. What a sweet girl.

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