Still here in the PICU

Taylor is doing so much better. She is off of her high-flow cannula and is not receiving any lung assistance at all except for her CPAP hat treatments. Her PIC line is still in, and will be until she leaves intensive care, but her IV is out. She is ready to leave.

The last few days have had their ups and downs. Saturday night went pretty well. Minus the fact that there were 2 parents that didn't get more than an hour of sleep because they were too busy doting on their daughter, the night went about perfect. We must have looked really bad in the morning, so much so that they needed to wake us up in a hurry. Our nurse did that, by calmly telling me that the latest X-Ray showed that Taylor's upper-right lung had collapsed again. I was half awake when she asked me if I had heard that Taylor's lung had collapsed. I said yea thinking that she was talking about the previous week, and then kind of woke up and said, "wait, you mean it collapsed again?" and she said yeah. Our hearts pretty much collapsed.

The doctor came in later to talk about it and made us feel a lot better. It is pretty common, and the amount that collapsed was very small (especially compared to the previous week). He said it was only about 10% of the lung capacity and under normal circumstances it wouldn't be something they would even hospitalize someone for. They were going to continue on CPAP treatments, keep her on her high-flow cannula and see what happened (thinking it would probably fix itself).

Sunday morning went okay, but as Sunday went on Taylor wasn't improving as much as everyone hoped. Around 3 that afternoon she was having some more problems and the RT became nervous. They ran another blood test, had the doctor look at her again, and started talking about the next steps which would be either changing her to another form of CPAP or going back on the ventilator. I can't fully speak for Michelle, but I was pretty convinced that she was going to have to go back on the ventilator. I was pretty depressed.

But then our RT bounced back in the room with the results of the blood test and she gave it to the doctor and everyone smiled and said it was perfect. So they would just continue things as is. Then they told us it was time to change rooms. Taylor's roommate Anthony had graduated and left intensive care. They needed to move us to another room that had another RSV kid. So, still shaky from our scare, we packed up and moved. Our new room was even smaller, and we weren't very happy. At the same time my mom and dad came. Way too much excitement for this tired old guy.

From that point on Taylor has been getting better. She has had problems coughing. She also didn't want to drink. Her throat hurt her so bad. On top of it, Monday morning she started having severe (at least to us) withdrawals. She was so wired, and couldn't sleep. Her poor little hands were just restless and wouldn't stop moving. As the day progressed her right foot started thumping (like Thumper from Bambi). She started getting very sad and was just plain miserable. Her heart rate was even high. They gave her an anti-anxiety drug and that was the ticket. She crashed. And she crashed hard. She slept for 5 hours before waking up, downing almost her normal feed in record time, and then went right back to sleep. The sleep worked wonders for her, except that she was so comfortable that the RTs decided to delay her CPAP treatments for a while so that she could sleep. At 8pm the RT came in to do it, but listened to her and said she didn't need it. I was so excited, I could barely contain myself. She was doing so well. I was sure we were leaving.

Then at 11pm I handed Taylor to Michelle and our heart sunk again. Her lungs were retracting again. It was in the center of her chest this time, not where it had been, but it scared the crap out of us. The RT was called and she didn't seem too concerned, but did start her CPAP treatments again. This morning, we got a new doctor. Taylor's C02 level had gone up a little during the night, and with the fact that she had been retracting, he didn't want her to leave.

So we're still here. Taylor has been getting treatments through out the day. Her lungs are kicking butt now and they were talking that they might move us out of here tonight. We just found out though that it wouldn't happen unless they needed the room. So one more night...

We are hoping that our little girl goes to sleep. She is not anything like yesterday, but she is wired still and will not sleep. She's maybe slept a total of 30 minutes or so today in short little naps. So far she hasn't been real miserable (except at times just for a little while). In fact, its just the opposite. Today has been one massive smile fest. She smiles at us non-stop, and she's even smiling at the nurses and RTs which is in of itself amazing. She needs to stop smiling though and go to sleep. One thing though, every time she smiles, her mom just lights up. Just watching the two of them today has made my heart skip a beat or two a couple of times, and this time they are very happy skips.

A few weeks we had this happy little girl. 2 weeks ago she got sick. Just a little over a week ago, we thought we were going to lose her. Its been a crazy ride again, but today our little girl is back to normal (although very wired) and she can't stop smiling. And neither can we.