Our Peanut and the Continued Adventures of Ratatouille!

Let's start with our enemy Ratatouille...last week Aleya had a run in with him that ended in a few of the younger boys wanting to go after him behind our stove with a broom. The only issue is, as I've mentioned before, he is NOT a mouse but a LARGE rat! I think he might turn his head and snicker at a broom...seriously! So yesterday afternoon James (our absolutely fantastic maintenance guy) was hooking up our new fridge!!!! And, his wife Jannie (another nurse I've mentioned a few other times) was in our building as well. She runs a food box program that gets boxes of essential foods to families every other week. Anyway, she was trying to bag some peanuts to make a box for one of our former baby house kids, Julio...and Ratatouille appeared. He didn't run but slowing slithered up over another big 25kg bag of peanuts to hide back in the corner. HE IS SICK!!! THE RAT POISON IS WORKING!!! So here is our issue now...we don't want him to die back there and start stinking. One of the maintenance guys thought we had all lost our minds as we attempted to get him to come back out, take his picture, and somehow kill him. There was much shrieking and laughter to go around. We left a wonderful maintenance guy working on the whole thing, but I have this funny feeling it wasn't nearly as important to him to see Ratatouille dead as it is to all of us...I think he is still back there in his corner behind the food box peanuts slowly dying of all the rat poison he has eaten! So the adventures continue...

Ok, onto our Peanut...yesterday Fernanda continued with her hatred of anything we tried to feed her besides a banana and milk. She is a smart little one. The tias were even hiding the baby cereal and mixing a little into her milk and she still knew it was in there and vomited it right back up. Possibly a power thing...she has no control over anything else in her little life right now so not eating things is something she can control. No good for those of us trying to get her to gain weight! Although...YESTERDAY SHE GAINED WEIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME! We started at 7.36kg (16.2 pounds) about 2 weeks ago although most of that was water weight because of all her edema. Now she is at 6.37kg (14 pounds), but that is 100 grams (3.5 ounces) heavier than yesterday! We have 2 options as to why she gained weight...1- God performs miracles! 2- It's a fake gain and she will have lost even more today (we are only doubtful because of all the vomiting, pooping, and peeing she has been doing). But we as a staff and those who love her are choosing option number 1! We believe in the miraculous for our little ones and especially this peanut who could use it right now.As for other news...she LOVES beans and rice (or at least she did yesterday)! She was whimpering and trying to crawl out of my arms as Erin prepared some soupy mashed up beans and rice for her. She ate half the bowl along with 100ml of milk with no vomiting...until her next feed of baby cereal. We decided today to hide the baby cereal in each of her bottles and give her beans and rice as main meals. Although the text I just got shows just how smart she is because after one sip she knew there was baby cereal in her milk and there came right back up.
She is still having high fevers that are only slightly lowered with medications. She now has taken to laying on the floor where it is cooler to bring down her body temperature. From her lab work she doesn't seem to be septic. Also, her skin is still pealing...just like a snake. This can be attributed to the overwhelming edema she had from her malnutrition or caused by other issues we're looking into as well.For now we are just trying to keep her hydrated and get food to stay down. We are waiting to find out how to proceed and hopefully start her on other medications next week. This will not be an easy task at all because for the first about 2 weeks these medications do more harm than good. They are VERY harsh and cause normal kids to throw up and lose weight. But if we persevere with a great deal of prayers and faith in God...maybe these medications could save this little girl's life!
Just keep praying please!!!! She is quite the fighter, adorable, and so sweet!