Eleanor is from Jefferson City. She is 4.
Diagnosis: Born at 24 weeks gestational age, Mild CP, recovering from a TE fistula, and a plethora of others
Eleanor has a complex medical history after being born at 24 weeks. She graduated the NICU after 150 days with a g-tube because it was found that she aspirated thin liquids. She attended feeding clinic at MU Children’s therapy to help ween her off the tube feed and was doing great! She was a little foodie. At about 2 years old, she started to struggle when trying to consume food orally. She started to vomit up copious amounts of mucus whenever she attempted, and we became more dependent on her gtube. However, her g-tube feeds were staying down. Dun….dun….dun……what the heck was going on? She had her team pretty confused. Everyone worked together to figure out what was going on with her and discovered she had an ingested button battery that had fused itself to the wall of her esophagus and created a TE fistula. She ended up needing to have a series of esophageal stents placed/replaced over several months to allow the fistula to heal. She also ended up with osteomyelitis in her spinal vertebrae afterwards due to bacteria sneaking through the fistula while it was open. She was in the hospital for about a week and then discharged home with a PICC line and received antibiotics for 6 weeks.
Eleanor is going to be a big sister in April. She loves reading, helping mom in the kitchen (mostly sampling as mom cooks), collecting/learning about Pokémon with dad, spinning herself dizzy, playing with her puppy and kitty, and video chatting with friends and family.
Her parents are Josh and Nicole Jones