Finally home!

We finally made it home! It took a day longer than we anticipated because, of course, just as we were getting ready to leave they took vitals on Hannah and she had a slight fever. Because we didn't want to have to take her home and bring her right back, they did a blood test and a urinalysis. The lab got something screwed up, so the results didn't come back until late Thursday night. So we didn't get to go home until Friday--could have been Friday morning, but Friday is now my heaviest scheduled workday, so I had to go to the college.

Hannah slept really well last night. I can hear her snuffling in there right now, just waking up, so I need to go see about her. We're just glad to be home--and I think she is too. She spent quite some time playing with her musical keyboard in her crib.

Still here

Hannah is still in the hospital, but she has had (it seems to me) a tremendous improvement over yesterday. Her respiratory stuff, which is what brought her in, has been doing pretty well, but other issues kept us from taking her home. For days her pulse rate has stayed high, and she's been antsy. That usually means her fever is up or she's constipated or she's in pain somewhere. But although her fever was up slightly (99.4), it wasn't high enough to cause this kind of reaction. And rounds of acetaminophen and ibuprofen didn't change it, so it's not likely either fever or pain (although neither of them brought the fever down). And prune juice had it's desired effect, but her pulse stayed up, even after the low-grade fever went down on its own.

Finally yesterday they had the neurologist take a look, and he decided a small regular dose of Valium would be good for a few days. It had an almost immediate positive effect. Everything went to normal. Her oxygen dropped initially, but she went all through the night without oxygen (slept the whole night, too, first time since she's been here this time), and it was at 100% this morning. Even her secretions seem more normal (Dr. Gammeltoft, the neurologist, said that was quite possible, since the Valium also lessened the amount of neck arching she was doing).

They may want to keep her through tonight just to make sure we've got the new patterns under control, but I think it's likely we'll go home today or tomorrow.