T+24: This is hard

It may well be that Kay can go home on Wednesday but at the moment her nausea is getting worse. In the last 24 hours she has been sick 4 times, each time throwing up her NG tube. Yesterday evening and early this morning she was sick. The reinstallation of her NG tube in the evening was extremely painful for some reason. This evening she started feeling sick again around 8pm. She bravely fought off the feeling for as long as she could but eventually, just when I was briefly out of the room, she was very sick and brought up the tube again. I walked back in just in time to drag the tube out of her throat. Again the process of refitting it caused her pain and when the tube was in she complained that it was painful and stopped her swallowing properly. But given the choice of taking it out or leaving it, discretion won.

I arranged for her to get a paracetamol for the pain in her nose and cuddled her until she fell asleep, around 11pm. But an hour later she suddenly woke complaining that she felt sick again. I stopped her feed pump, but shortly after she was sick again and again the tube came up. I've proposed that we now leave refitting the tube again until morning. It means that she won't get fed during the night, but she's absolutely fed up, very upset, tired and her nose is painful. So letting her rest I think is the better course of action, but I have yet to hear whether the doctor approves.

I'm exhausted. I was up early(ish), I've been at the office and then I've been running around all evening with one thing or another. On top of this the feeling of complete helplessness is debillitating. I'd do anything to relieve Kay of this problem. I think that the nurses are getting sick of me asking whether there's anything more that can be done. But the answer seems to be, no, she just has to get through it. I hope that this isn't the beginning of another medical mistake, a moment when we as parents should make more noise about the problem. I think not, she has no other symptoms than nausea and so as long as that remains the same I guess the professional wisdom is the right wisdom. But it is very hard.

And I wonder how we will cope if this pattern carries on at home. Not least the amount of washing and cleaning involved will impose an unwanted additional load.