03/22/2026
It’s hard to believe this weekend marks two months post surgery. In late January, the day after MLK, Jr. Day, our youngest started complaining of a belly ache and didn’t want to go to school. My oldest felt fine, until I picked her up from rehearsal that evening. She skipped dinner and went right to her room where she vomited off-and-on throughout the night. Honestly, our family thought it was the norovirus and I too felt queasy all Tuesday night. Hubs and I juggled child care with work that week, but by Friday we decided to take both girls to Patient First before “Snowmaggedon” that weekend. Both girls came up negative for Strep, Covid, and Influenza. The doctor advised us to take Olivia to the ER right after our visit that day because she suspected there might be trouble with her appendix. We checked into the ER and turns out her appendix had likely burst Tuesday night. She was transferred to LV Reilly Children’s Hospital to the Pediatric ER for an emergency appendectomy that evening. I was a nervous wreck since the procedure took two hours longer than usual to clean up the mess created by her perforated appendix. It took a month of no
Although I wrangle bacteria daily, I’ve been thinking about the gut microbiome at lot more these past couple of months. Olivia had been put on antibiotics post surgery and then again after returning to the hospital a few days after being discharged. A virulent strain of e. coli bacteria was detected and another round of antiobiotics, stronger this time, was recommended by the infectious disease specialist. Our poor girl’s gut has been wiped out and I’m here to help it back in shape. She’s been on a regimine of kombucha, kefir milk, and her favorite fermented veggie - garlic dill carrots, Kimchi, and curtido.
