Day 2 - Friday

Our spunky and fiery 3 year old made an appearance today. She is weaning from the morphine, which will probably be totally off tomorrow and is on tylenol and something else that I can't seem to remember the name of at the moment. Her pain management has been really good. She doesn't seem to be in much pain, just discomfort at most. And that is mainly from being confined to a bed. She gets really fiesty when it comes to the nasal cannula that is giving her oxygen. She is being weaned off oxygen, but will desat (pulse ox drops) when it comes off so she still needs it now. She hates having something up her nose and I can't blame her. If that is the biggest of her problems, we'll deal with it. She has gotten pretty mad that we keep making her put it back in. Hopefully, she won't need it much longer. Her arterial line was removed this afternoon. She's eaten some food and had lots to drink. I think her chest tube drainage is at an amount that is to be expected. She hasn't complained that the area that they are connected to on her chest has bothered her, so that is good. She looks great. She has talked to about wanting to see a pink robot. She's so silly. She's hoping to see the therapy dog, which will be around Wednesday. I'm hoping to see home by Wednesday. We should be moving over to the step down unit sometime shortly this evening. She would have gone over earlier, but apparently it's been busy over there so they pushed back the time. That's fine by me because the PICU has been quiet and she has had good nurses. Actually, all the nurses have been wonderful. Dr. Stewart and Dr. Edwards both have dropped by today. Dr. Stewart says that it doesn't get any better than this, so we are glad that they are pleased with her progress so far. Post op recovery is slow going and she's doing well. There isn't much action (which is good!) and we're just passing the time and giving her a chance to heal. She is sleeping now and Oliver just went to grab some food so I'm just going to chill. It's hard not to reflect on past experiences in the PICU, which were not nearly as calm. I'll leave that for another post, but I can really sympathize with the families of the little tiny babies here. And it seems like there a lot of little tiny ones here now. Time and Sofia's good health have erased a lot of those painful days. I hope these other families are as lucky. Here are some pictures to end with...

I told her to smile, so this is her half smile.

This is the Gortex tube used to make her conduit...it is actually this big in diameter!

sleeping comfortably