Monday

It was about 6AM Monday when our little girl seemed to take a small step away from the edge.  She seemed stable enough and in really good hands.  Christina and I both wanted one of us to be home before our son Jeremiah woke up.  I left for home and arrived just in time for my son to wake.  The first thing out of his mouth destroyed me...... he said he did not hear his sissy cry.  He then set out to find her... looking in her bassinet... her crib, her room.  I explained to him that sissy was very sick and in the hospital.  I was overjoyed and sad at the same time.  My son had grown to love his sister dearly in just 1 short month...... and he gained reassurance that sissy was there from her cries in the night.

Christina spent the first day with Daisy in the hospital.  My hope was that Christina would be able to be very close to our Daisy and possibly get a little rest during the day (something not possible with a 2.5 year old at home).  She needed rest badly as she was very sick both with the flu and with sadness.  I think we were all settling into our new reality, Daisy was going to be in the hospital for a good stretch.  We had a very long, rough road ahead of us.  Daisy was sedated and paralyzed with drugs so that she would not try and fight the very odd mechanics of the oscillator type ventilator which was doing the breathing for her.  He "med pole", a 6 f.5 ft tall pole that held all the IV meds and pumps was absolutely full of pumps and fluids front and back.... she had meds to maintain blood pressure, meds to opens veins and arteries, meds to stop an seizures from occurring, meds waiting at the ready to shock her heart back should she start to crash again, meds to sedate her, meds to paralyze her.... and several more which I did not have time to learn what they did.  Her lung x-ray looked terrible.... almost all of both lungs was "closed" due to the virus.  The end of the day brought our first bit of good news.  They did an ultrasound of her brain, kidneys, liver, gal bladder, stomach, and bowels.  When you go into a respiratory and cardiac arrest the time spent trying to revive you is a low oxygen condition for your body.  The body begins to divert oxygen from less important stuff (stomach, etc) to more important stuff (brain, heart, etc).  The ultrasound showed that the liver and kidneys looked ok considering what Daisy just went through.  The gal bladder has some sludge that she should be able to work through... the stomach and the bowels had some dead layers due to the low oxygen condition.  The layers should sluff off and be passed by the body.  The bad part is that her stomach was terribly swollen.  The best news of all is that the brain had no major bleeds detectable by ultrasound.  Daisy was not longer receiving her momma's milk rather the necessary nutrients to sustain her are put directly into her blood stream.  Her stomach needs to heal before feeding via feeding tube can begin.  At this point our baby girl is not breathing for herself, unable to maintain her own blood pressure, is being regulated temp wise to manage the terrible flu that got her here and needs an awful lot of meds to keep her moving.  She is alive and we are thankful for that.

Daddy's first night in the hospital with Daisy is Monday night and he is looking forward to seeing his baby girl again.