Tuesday, October 2, 2012

In a Dramatic Turn of Events…

Guess who came home today?

DSC_0352Coming Home driveway art courtesy of Adalynn- with, maybe, a little help from Nana.

piper

…WITHOUT OXYGEN!!!

They turned her off last night at about midnight and she stayed in the lower 90’s all night.  I was so stinking excited that I’m not sure we weren’t singing during breakfast.  The doctor came in around 9 and asked if I was comfortable going home.  After watching Piper tear the room apart for the hour and a half leading up to that, I thought home sounded DIVINE.  We were outta there by 10:30. 

Of course, tonight, I’m a nervous wreck; pretty sure I’ll be up checking her every 24 minutes, but I’m (almost) sure it’ll be worth it.

balloonI decided we all needed some good ol’ out in the sunshine time this afternoon- Piper frolicked in the front yard with the balloon from Maggie and Rachel- she was very happy that her hospital room décor could come home with her!

I’m having a hard time processing everything that happened during her stay there; she was in shock (her body temperature varied from 35 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius- and when she had a fever, it was difficult to control), her carbon dioxide levels were on the verge of way too high (they were too high, but her body was producing a suitable amount of sodium bicarbonate to protect itself), she wasn’t allowed out of bed for over 10 days, the attending told me more than once that “she should be okay- so long as she doesn’t throw us any more curve balls…”, she was unable to stand for longer than a few seconds her first two days out of the PICU…  I’m trying to be grateful that she’s okay, and that she’s better!  But it’s hard trying to “get over” how sick she really was.  And trying not to fear her getting this sick again.  I’d really like to know HOW she got whatever-this-was so that I could keep it from happening again.  Obviously I can’t have that; I’m afraid it may be a long winter.  There’s a teeny chance that, when we were forcing medication down her after her tonsillectomy, we got some down into her lungs which eventually got infected.  She could have been fighting it for a while and she just couldn’t keep it up.  Her pediatrician wants us to do a swallow study to rule out aspiration, just to be sure, but the antibiotic that appeared to help doesn’t specifically target aspiration pneumonia (the second antibiotic that she was on DID, but it didn’t seem to make her any better) and she’s never showed any symptoms (plus she had a study done when she was an infant which was clear.) 

Unanswered questions are hard. 

But I’m sure glad I had this view tonight…

DSC_0356

5 comments:

  1. Good to hear she is home now :)

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  2. So glad you guys are home. Things like this do affect us as mothers and I certainly understand how nervous you are about winter. Lucas's 12 day stint in the hospital for croup and pneumonia left an impression on me. I hate winter, I get so anxious every fall. I have a hard time when my kids are sick, the worry consumes me to the point where I am really not functioning well. And I know you've had your share of hospital visits beyond this one. Hugs to you Aimee and little Piper. Also I think getting a swallow study is a GREAT idea, I would do it as soon as possible.

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  3. So glad you are home! Darren asked if Piper had to go home on O2 and I realized I forgot to ask....so glad she is tube free!

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