Hard Morning

I feel like our update today bounces back & forth with good news & bad news, "bad" certainly being relative.

Some good news is that H slept great last night, getting at least 2-3 hour blocks of uninterrupted sleep. (Which means we slept too!) At 5am, the nurse came in to give her Tylenol and Oxycodone (a narcotic we gave her twice last night as she seemed to be in more pain than usual). She also said she needed to make her last blood draw so was taking out her IV & would collect her blood in a vile after the needle came out. So more good news: H's IV came out early this morning.

The bad news is that the blood she drew had coagulated & couldn't be used. So now we have no IV through which to draw blood. H is so chubby that everyone who tries to get blood has an incredibly hard time finding a vein to access. So when they came in later this morning to say they had to draw more blood, I could feel MY blood rising. After two heal pricks & rather painful squeezing, they called in the vein team (apparently these folks are the expert blood collectors). The vein team poked a needle into her right arm. That didn't work. By now, I am in tears. I actually had to go into the bathroom where I lost it. I was so incredibly frustrated they had taken out the IV, so frustrated they needed more blood, and simply hurting for H that she had to go through this again. Finally, they got the blood they needed through another heal prick.

More good news is that while they were drawing blood, the neurosurgery people came in to remove the drain out of her head! They suggested doing it on the tails of the blood draw to just get it over with while she was still upset. H was so exhausted from crying from the blood draw that she actually fell asleep while they took out the drain! But she woke up when they put in the stitch.

H woke up about an hour ago from being sacked out from this morning's drama. She nursed well. I picked her up from changing her diaper & there's blood on the sheet from her head. Sigh. So now she seems to be bleeding a bit from the stitch or something. We're not sure right now because she fell asleep again before her nurse could come check. (Another nurse came & put some gauze on it but she wasn't in a position to determine why it was bleeding.)

Now she's resting after having received more Tylenol (no more narcotics for now). So more good news is that her swelling is almost non-existent & she is TOTALLY free from anything inside her body...no more IVs or drains or anything. The only thing she is attached to are the monitors (little suction cups three places on her chest).

We are hoping for a good head scrubbing later today which will aid to the healing of her incisions & where the drain was.

Things to pray: Pray she doesn't need more blood drawn. Pray she remains infection free. Pray she continues to nurse well. Pray for no vomiting. (She threw up twice yesterday, which isn't good.) Pray for no more hiccups in her recovery. Pray she is not in a lot of pain. Pray she rests well.

They are telling us we should be able to go home tomorrow if all continues as it has. That's good news.

Finally, THANK YOU to everyone who sent us e-cards! I don't know how you all knew to do that but we were elated when the nurse brought in this thick packet of paper full of notes from so many of you! What a sweet treat in the midst of a frustrating morning.

More later,
M+K