Day 16

Erin continues to do well. She had a great day yesterday, and was awake for a good portion of the day. It is really fun to hold her and interact with her, and to follow her progress daily as she becomes more aware and alert.

Last night, we had another good bonding session. Every night I vow to sneak out by 9 and go home, and yet I rarely get out of her before 10. Last night was no different, except just to throw some excitement into things, Erin decided to puke all over me at 10 just as I was preparing to put her down. To add insult to injury, she didn't even bother to wake up while she was doing it! I am pretty sure it was a passive aggressive attack on me. :-) I have always been very squeamish about baby fluids and byproducts. I have also been told that when it is your child, you don't mind. I have learned that this theory is in fact true.

Today was a little more sobering. The doctors were all in heavy discussion over how fast to wean her off the Milrinone. The last time, it was pretty fast, and she crashed. As cardiologist Jeff says, we are past science, and into art here in trying to figure out the right course of treatment. Her condition is serious and life threatening if not treated properly, and we need to keep that in mind. Erin doesn't have a lot of reserve or strength in her heart to adjust to sudden changes, thus we need to wean her far more slowly that we were originally told. The Milrinone will be reduced by a factor of 1 each day until Thursday. At that point, if all is well, we will then work on the oxygen. However, we have been told that if all goes well, we have another two weeks here.

Jeff also added the sobering note that we are not nearly out of the woods yet on her needing immediate surgery, and if that is necessary, we need to prepare for a much longer stay. I apparently misunderstood Jeff last week when he said that the chances of her avoiding surgery were between 80-20 and 70-30. He was indicating that she had a 20-30% chance of avoiding the surgery, not the other way around. Today he said that it is 60-40 in hopes of avoiding anything right now. That is an improvement from last week, but because of my misunderstanding a setback emotionally.

We also received the great news today that our new home in Scottsdale was broken into over the weekend. Six plasma TV's that had just been installed were ripped off the walls and stolen. Doesn't seem like that big of a deal, frankly.