Labor Day Weekend Update

Hi family and friends,

As many of you know, Alli was admitted to Egleston yesterday afternoon.  She had quite the exciting journey here, arriving by helicopter.  She was admitted in respiratory distress, which they have determined is a result of rhinovirus (common cold to the layperson).  She had a difficult evening and has been fighting fever and working very hard to breathe.  Therefore, they are going to move her in to intensive care so that she will have more intensive nursing care and they can safely take more invasive measures to help her breathe, if necessary.  Right now she is resting somewhat comfortably and I expect we willbe moving soon.

I will post updates as we have more information.

Have a great holiday weekend!
Megan

Update: September 2, 2012

Alli rested comfortably last night and in to this morning.  She is currently on 2 liters of oxygen and they have been able to get her congestion under control with a combination of afrin and deep suctioning.  She is still in icu given the level of oxygen she currently requires.  Our goal is to get her oxygen reduced and her sats stabilized so she can go home.  She then will need to get and keep herself healthy enough to have her adenoidetomy and g-tube inserted.  We would like to have her procedure done before she goes to Memhis the week of October 8th.  As of now we are scheduled to check her in to the epilepsy monitoring unit at le bonheur children's hospital in hopes of getting control over her infantile spasms, if we haven't been able to get control before then.

We will keep you posted with information as things change.  Thanks for all of your prayers, love, and support!

Megan

Update: September 3, 2012

Alli and I had a pretty restless night last night. We were up every couple of hours for suctioning, various bells going off, etc. She has generally been irritable when she is awake, so I have set the rocking chair up close to her bed so we can snuggle. In general she is not a huge fan of being suctioned or the nasal cannula. The doctors came by this morning and said she will likely spend today and tonight in the icu, but will hopefully transfer back down to general peds tomorrow, assuming they can reduce her oxygen. This morning they have her down at 1.5, so that is a start. She is resting now. We will have an ENT consult tomorrow regarding her status and the timing of her surgery.

Thanks for checking in with us!
Megan

Update: September 4

Today was a productive day. Alli moved to the general peds floor this afternoon. We were also able to get her oxygen down to 1 liter. She has been much more awake and very alert and active. It is likely that she will come home with oxygen and a pulse ox machine. The order was placed for both pieces of equipment today. We have not discussed a departure date, but hope to be home by the end of the week. I hope everyone had a good start to the shortened work/school week!

Megan

Hello again!

I suppose I need to change the title of this post to Labor Day week. Alli is back in icu as of this afternoon. After a good day yesterday, she started to show signs of potential pneumonia today. So, she is on pressurized oxygen and an antibiotic to help control any potential bacterial infection. Not a huge fan of antibiotics, but I think they are warranted in this instance. So, we hope for the best and to be able to minimize their use as much as possible. She hasn't had any antibiotic up to this point, so we are grateful for that. Hopefully it will be a short stay in picu.

In other news, we are very excited to share that we are pregnant again with a little boy. He is due March 12 and so far appears to be healthy. We had our 13 week ultrasound this morning and there was no mistaking the gender.

Ok, glad I could end on a good note! Have a good night!

Megan