Hey, This Hospital Has Wi-Fi!

That's pretty cool. Now maybe they could work on covering the basics, like a cafeteria that is open for three meals a day rather than just between the hours of 11 a.m.-2 p.m.? Because the eat-one-meal-a-day thing doesn't work out for parents staying at the hospital 24/7 with their kids. The only store within walking distance is Walgreens. I guess I could buy a dinner of little bottles of alcohol* and Cheetos there if I get desperate. Yummy!

Little A is next to me in her crib/cage as I write this, butt high in the air and face down, nose plowed into her fuzzy blankie. She continued her pattern of going on oxygen earlier each day. Today she desaturated and went on it at 3 p.m., whereas yesterday it was 7 p.m., and the after being off since 7 or 8 a.m. If she were not on oxygen now I'd be turning her over on her back for the 312th time and carefully respositioning her so she could breathe better while staring at the monitor, hoping to prevent her from going back on the supplemental Os. But since she's already on them now, I'll just let her snooze the way she wants for now as I write.

I wish I could say we are going home tomorrow, but it's looking like Thursday or Friday are the more likely scenarios. I wish it were earlier, but it is what it is. I really think that sleep deprivation may be the culprit for her desats at this point: She has bags under her eyes from lack of sleep! When she finally does take a nap, her body just can't keep up with her needs like it might have if she hadn't been exhausted on top of being sick. Annoying, but I'm not sure I can do much about it. I'll talk to the nurse about possibly delaying vital checks if she's sleeping, though. (Don't know if they'll do it, but I can always ask ...)


*For nonCalifornians it might sound weird that I could buy booze at a drugstore. But out here grocery and drug stores often have whole aisles filled with alcohol.

Used that Prepacked Overnight Bag ...

Paul Moore: It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room.

Jane Craig: No. It's awful.

I've been thinking about this, my favorite quote from the movie Broadcast News, a lot over the past few days. Not that I believe I'm anywhere close to being the smartest person in the rooms I frequent. But I've been right about a key issue a lot recently, and how that is working out feels awful.

Saturday played out like a water-down version of three weeks ago Sunday, when Little A's original cold went from something normal to something scary. It's all less insanely frightening than before, but still no fun. First DH and I had differing opinions on how to proceed with Little A's developing illness. He was concerned but more of the "let's wait and see, it's work out ok by itself" school, while I was of the "my mommy instinct is tingling madly, something is WRONG and we must attend to it NOW" school. We exchanged words about our differences in a not-very-nice way this time, much the way we did before Little A's hospitalization last time. We sort of made up afterwards, but the stress of what was said remains. And then after a few phone calls back and forth with the pediatrician, I ended up bringing Little A to the ER by myself while DH stayed home with Big A.

This time she was in respiratory distress (as opposed to respiratory failure last time) when we arrived at the ER. The staff tried several one-hour albuterol treatments and did a chest Xray before deciding to admit her. They informed us that this time instead of staying at Children's hospital, she was being transferred to another hospital across the city. They said the transfer to the other unit (I'll call it Hilltop Hospital) was because Little A wasn't sick enough to rate a room at Children's Hospital, which is reserved for the most severe illnesses. To which I said, "Yay?" Then Little A and I took our second ambulance ride of the month together.

Hilltop hospital is the shabby, country cousin of Children's Hospital. The nurses we met at Children's were all stellar whereas Hilltop nurses seem to be more of a mixed bag. The facilities are far less posh. Some of the policies seem arbitrary and very family unfriendly, whereas everything at Children's was progressively geared toward making a child's hospital stay as easy on the child and family as possible.

But, the one thing Hilltop has that Children's doesn't is private rooms. Thank God we have one. We have a quiet space all to ourselves this time, rather than a curtained ward room shared by six patients.

And the view? Pretty darn nice. (Though I can think of better ways of seeing it than from a hospital):




That's Oakland in the foreground, with both (stylistically incongruent) sections of the Bay Bridge in view. Those with eagle eyes can also spy the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

And here's a shot of the view at sunset, with San Francisco's skyline showing off its pretty silhouette:



We now live in limbo. Because while Little A is definitely not as sick as before, she is still nonetheless not in good enough condition to come home. At first we hoped she'd be discharged Sunday morning, but at 5 a.m. Sunday she needed to be put on supplemental oxygen, which killed our chances of discharge that day. They removed the oxygen supplement a few hours later and she went until 2 a.m. Monday without it, but then desaturated and needed oxygen once more. Today they took her off the oxygen at seven a.m., but she was back on it by seven p.m.

To me, the pattern isn't one of getting better or even of holding ground. It worries me. Each day they put her on the oxygen earlier than the day before, and she stays on it longer. At the same time, the doctors and nurses seem to be focusing on the fact that her admitting Xrays this weekend looked better than her discharge Xrays did earlier in the month. They also point out that so far, they are not putting her on ever-higher levels of oxygen, either. 0.50 liters per minute is fine to keep her saturation in the nineties while she sleeps deeply. When awake she can maintain a safe oxygen level without supplementing, which is something it took many days to accomplish during the first hospital stay.

Part of me focuses on those good things too and feels relieved. But another part of me is so frustrated, because any need for oxygen prevents us from bringing Little A home. From a practical standpoint, the amount of oxygen doesn't really matter, the end result -- more hospital time -- is the same regardless.

I feel like I'm failing at everything. Failing Little A by not working harder to prevent her from getting sick again when she was ill so recently, failing at my job because so much of this month has been spent taking care of ill children. Failing Big A by obliterating her much-needed life routines when one of her parents is always at the hospital rather than at home.

I also suspect DH feels I'm failing him. I think he's like Paul More in Broadcast News, believing that like Jane Craig, I revel in making the right calls about going to the hospital with Little A. He just seems to take whatever I say about the girls' health as a braying I-told-you-so on the subject now. But the reality? I just feel scared and bewildered about all of this. There is no comfort in being right when it means your child wins a hospital stay.

And is it wrong for me to so acutely notice that DH has never even acknowledged that I was right to insist on going to the hospital in both these recent situations? How do I keep ending up the bad person in all our disagreements about Little A's health and treatments?

Like I said -- awful.

One More Thing

Last night Little A got a fever and a strong wheeze back in her lungs again.

So, back we went to her pediatrician's office today during their weekend drop-in clinic. That makes three visits in four days between the two As. So far it's not pneumonia again (yet). But, it's not good. We'll be back in the pediatrician's office first thing Monday if things go as planned.

Because I'm in a really black mood, I have already packed a hospital overnight bag. That way if we have to suddenly go to the ER and have her admitted for treatment before Monday, at least we won't be without some basic needs: a stash of toddler-appropriate snacks, a warm blanket for Little A to snuggle, toiletries for me, etc.

Children don't get serious lung infections multiple times per month unless they have an underlying autoimmune disease. So, in addition to the problem of the moment, I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that Little A has asthma. This is the most likely culprit, and with the other possible options being things like cystic fibrosis, we'll take asthma. (Well, obviously nobody is letting us choose what she has ... but if we had a choice in this scenario, asthma seems like the best of the crappy things we could pick. )

We'll be giving a lot of nebulizer treatments multiple times per day for the time being and hoping it doesn't turn into pneumonia again. We'll sort out the rest of the ramifications of the asthma when things calm down more.

I know I am whining and probably come across as particularly ungrateful right now. Apologies for that. Chalk it up to the continued sleeplessness and a myriad of worries.

Enough Already

January has been post-lite for me. It's all related to residing in the house o' plague. Little A's illness alone ate three weeks of our lives: a week when we thought it was just a bad cold and tried to manage it with doctor's visits, then the week when it was officially double pneumonia and she was hospitalized, and another week after that where she was at home, but I was giving her nebulizer treatments (five times a day), antibiotics (three times a day), and steroids (twice a day). There really wasn't time between medical treatments for anyone to do much of anything else.

So then Little A was ok again. Yay! Except I was sick with something I caught in the hospital by then and my doctor was afraid it was a super bug, so she gave me what she referred to as the "big-gun, super-serious antibiotics." Which did help clear up my ragged lungs, but only after making me nauseous and dizzy for days.

Meanwhile Big A was seriously acting out because Little A's hospital stay had frightened her. She began throwing fits like an overgrown toddler. I tried to be patient and give her lots of extra attention. I tried ignoring all but the most rude or obnoxious behavior. And if her antics were confined to daylight hours I probably could have gutted it through with more grace and kindness than I have. But oh, those nights. Her nocturnal shit fits have been driving DH and I insane. Multiple wake ups per night where no cuddle, kind word, or glass of water mollifies. After waking her sister and parents up she eventually quiets down enough to be put in the parental bed, but then she can only sleep with one hand jammed into my ribs and one foot shoved up DH's bum. Repositioning either appendage results in her waking and howling again.

Big A was finally getting back to normal when we she started complaining about an ear ache. We treated with tylenol for a few days but it wasn't going away on its own. So back to the doctor's office we went.

"Her ears look fine," World's Best Pediatrician said. "But I'm a little worried about this rattle I'm hearing on the left side of her chest." A treatment of albuterol in the office didn't change the rattle. So off across town for an Xray, which confirmed that Big A now has pneumonia in one lung.

The good news is we caught it early and Big A is doing well on antibiotics. It doesn't look like we are hospital-bound again. But if one more freaking thing happens this month, I swear that my head will explode. ENOUGH, already!

Why It's Important to Vote Pro Choice

NARAL is celebrating the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by asking bloggers to write about why it's important to vote pro choice. This is one of those topics that is so broad that I'm actually having a fairly hard time saying anything that isn't blah, blah, blah on it. It would be like asking the devout to write about why religion is good. Or making Ms. Pac Man explain why she eats the dots. Duh. What's to be said?

Of course, many people out there obviously don't think it is important to vote pro choice. Every single viable GOP presidential candidate right now is officially antichoice. So, I'm going to talk about the small little corner of pro-choicedom that I know very personally, which is termination for medical reasons.

I'm addressing this to all those married, middle-class, suburban, thirty-something Americans who routinely vote Republican because they don't think the abortion issue has anything to do with them. Please, start making this a priority in your voting. I'm appealing to your self interest now, because if abortions are restricted further, you are likely the first people that bans will impact directly. That's because abortion rights are getting chipped away in the second trimester before the first. And contrary to popular belief, the woman who ends a pregnancy in the second trimester isn't a callous bubblehead who forgot to schedule the appointment at the clinic for five whole months. Women who get second-trimester abortions are often married, middle class, suburban, thirty-something mothers who loved the unborn baby they aborted. I am the face of second-trimester abortion. And that means you potentially are, too. This is happening to women with wanted, planned pregnancies all the time.

Wait, you say I'm wrong -- you'd never have an abortion under any circumstances? You say you'd keep your baby, no matter what?

That sentiment is sweet, but also a trifle smug. Oh, the viscous, brutal things that can happen during a pregnancy. Things that no prenatal vitamin is mighty enough to thwart. Unfixable, misery-inducing predicaments for babies. Some of these afflictions are fatal, some not. Many in both categories are entirely devastating, for both the baby and his or her entire family.

Do you know the details of any of these potential problems? I'm guessing not. I didn't either until my unborn baby was diagnosed with one of them. And that's when I discovered that what can sound so correct on a bumper sticker might feel wrong when it comes to your actual child. I'm not saying all will want to have an abortion under my circumstances ... just that you will truly not know what you might do until faced with a real scenario. When staring down a poor prenatal diagnosis, all the easy rhetoric falls away. And wouldn't it be terrible to discover, too late, that abortion was an issue that impacted you directly after all, but was now completely off the table because you voted for people who didn't respect your right to make a choice?

I think that the pro choice agenda is, in many ways, a victim of our wealth and success in America. We live in a magical bubble of comfort and luxury where most of the time, people are healthy and things turn out alright. That kind of prosperity is great in a myriad of ways, but has one big ironic drawback: when people don't experience serious hardships on a regular basis, that can lead to a colossal failure of empathy and imagination among citizens. Many people out there simply cannot understand the challenges facing those who are not lucky or healthy in life. Under these circumstances, it's much easier to buy into the antichoice assertion that anyone who aborts must be completely different, both inside and out, than they are.

Don't buy into that argument. Remember that a pro choice vote is many things to many different people. For you, it is the way to protect your parental rights so you can make a full range of decisions if your wanted pregnancy goes disastrously wrong. So vote pro choice. Not because you want an abortion, but because some day you may discover that you need one.

Bye Bye, Baby

Latest development in the Wabi-Sabi abode: sisterly relationships are blooming! Up until now, the two A's shared space with each other, but most interactions were short and cajoled into occurring by a grownup. ("Hold her so I can take your picture together," etc.) But since Little A's birthday, the girls now play together on purpose. Big A builds block towers so Little A can smash through them. Even though Little A still can't walk, they play tag and some variety of hide and seek, too. It's incredibly heart warming to see the girls seek each other out enjoy each other's company. Growing up with a house full of brothers, I always yearned for a sister. Now I get to experience some of that through my own kids, which is wonderful.

Of course, just as I'm reaching for the camera to record video of some adorable scene, it has usually morphed into a tug of war over toys or some other variety of domestic strife. They are not shy at screaming at each other if the mood so strikes one of them.

The other day Big A fell asleep on the couch after a long walk, and her sister (who was energized after snoozing in the stroller on the bike path) crawled up and started poking Big A in the face. Big A moved away instinctively in her sleep, but that just made Little A even more interested in continuing her torture."Stop it, stop it, stoooop," complained Big A groggily.

To which Little replied, "Heh heh heh," sounding like a bonafide trickster. "Haw haw," she crowed triumphantly as she poked even harder before I could scoop her up.

My innocent little baby is now officially a toddler, I think.

Adventures in the Children's Hospital, Part 2

At Children's Hospital, the universal word of need is "Mama." Babies and small children cry it out constantly when uncomfortable. They yell it in anger when they feel cooped up or hungry or tired. They whine it in fear when anyone in scrubs approaches their bedside. At first it is jarring to hear the word howled so often, but after the first day I get used to it and start to screen out all the plaintive "Mama" calls around me.

Little A's room contains six beds and sits directly across from the nurses' station. Due to constant chatter of doctors, nurses, and parents at the desk outside our door, and the monitor alarms and beeps, plus sounds generated from six children and at least one parent per child at all times, our room remains cacophonous at least twenty hours a day. It is so loud that even with earplugs in, I can make out television dialog and distinct conversations in the room around me when I try to sleep. And poor Little A doesn't have earplugs, and is a naturally light sleeper, so the situation is even worse for her. She never sleeps before 11:30 or so each night, even though she is ready to drop by 8 p.m. Rather than getting her usual 14-15 hours of sleep each day, Little A is getting something closer to 8 hours. The combination of drugs, forced insomnia, and illness gets her so amped up that sometimes she bashes her head repeatedly against the metal bars of her crib.

The children crying and monitor noises I don't resent. But I grow more and more annoyed with the parents around us. At least half of them seem to be confused about where they are. This isn't a hotel, I keep muttering under my breath. This isn't about you and your entertainment. The annoying parents blare Nightline or telenovelas past midnight on their children's bedside TVs. Since the oldest child in the room is all of four, it seems to me that the TVs ought to all be turned off by nine or ten p.m. Unfortunately no nurse seems willing to tell the noisy parents this. Even when the TVs go off, some parents have loud, joking conversations with each other or on their telephones at 2 a.m.

The worst noise offenders also seem to be the people with the least-sick children, which only fuels my anger. The child with RSV a few beds down has coughing jags so severe that his mother keeps hitting the call button for nurse assistance as his choking sounds fill the room. Through my curtain I hear the doctors say that his lungs are getting worse. His fever is not going away, either. When that boy's mother speaks on the phone, it is practically in whispers. But the beds around that child and mine are a revolving door of not-nearly-as-sick children. It is the parents whose children only stay a night or two in the hospital who have the energy to shout into the phone about their recent travails, or to complain repeatedly about not having their hair dryer after they take a shower.

To be released home, Little A has to be fever-free and be able to breathe room air without her oxygen saturation falling below 90 percent for twenty-four hours in a row. Her fever breaks the first night, but it takes four days before we can get her off the supplemental oxygen for good. The nurses keep turning it down to try to wean her off, but after an hour or two of doing well, her saturation falls into the eighties, and then we have to turn the oxygen up again and start over. Each time this happens we reset our time table in the hospital by at least another 24 hours, which is frustrating. At the same time, the idea of taking her home before she is ready to go without oxygen scares the hell out of me. I want to be able to sleep at home, not sit in a chair by her bed watching her breathing out of fear. So until she is obviously more healed, it really is best for her to be in the hospital.

Finally by Thursday Little A's oxygen saturation stabilizes. She still needs to get through a night without any problems, but we are optimistic she'll go home the next day. I am ecstatic, but also have my hands full with Big A now. She has returned from her aunt's home in Sonoma after four days and is acting out. DH spends the first night home with her, but has such a difficult time that we decide I should go home for what will hopefully be Little A's last night in the hospital. DH stays with Little A while I try to reassure Big A that she hasn't been abandoned by us, and that her sister really is getting better and will be home soon. I give her a toy from the hospital gift shop, tell her she's a brave girl, and let her sleep in my bed. Normally she'd be in heaven, but she is pretty freaked out.

Big A is always the type of child who needs structure and routine, and the past few weeks have turned her world upside down: first Christmas recess from preschool mucked with things in a nice but chaotic way, and now this. And let's face it -- she's four, but she's not stupid. Big A may not understand the intricacies of calling 911 or being in the hospital, but she is not entirely buying the upbeat explanations she receives from DH and me about what's happening. She is scared and needs reassurance.

The next morning we awake to a howling rainstorm. It is the perfect sort of day to sleep in, but I have to hurry us out of the house early. Big A doesn't want to leave me, and is upset that I'm going back to the hospital and leaving her at preschool. She melts down over getting dressed, over breakfast, over not being able watch her favorite cartoon. I promise that today I will pick her up myself at 4 p.m. just like usual. Then I call DH at the hospital to verify that Little A did fine without oxygen for the night, which means she'll be discharged today. Hurray!

Unfortunately the power goes out at home during the rainstorm, and I worry how we'll be able to give the required breathing treatments every four hours if I can't plug in Little A's nebulizer. But just as I'm freaking out over that, the lights come back. It takes nearly 40 minutes to get to the hospital instead of the usual ten because the highway conditions are so poor in the storm. But it all fades away when I walk into the hospital and see Big A bouncing around in her crib, thrilled to see me. This time, I let the "Mama, mama, mama!" in, and bask in it.



So now we've been home for four days, and so far, so good. The funny thing is that because of her age, the whole experience seems to have been less traumatic for Little A than it was for the family! The rest of us definitely need a vacation from Christmas Vacation at this point.

Adventures in the Children's Hospital: Part 1

As soon as the ambulance carrying Little A arrived at the Big City Children's Hospital, people scoff at her IV. The tube attached to her scalp threads through a small plastic medicine cup with the bottom punched out. The cup supports and protects the line. A wad of tape attaches the line and cup to Little A's head. It looks like a fez created by McGyver. Little A is one tiny car short of a baby Shriner.

"Did we do that?" people ask multiple times in the emergency department. The tone of voice is always disdainful, whether the person asking is an X-ray tech, orderly, or a nurse. Obviously they do better work here than in the last hospital. I feel sheepish every time someone asks about the IV fez, because it reminds me that this is all my fault.

I'd considered leaving Tahoe in the early morning Sunday when Little A looked so lethargic, but instead DH persuaded me to wait a few more hours to see if she improved before we packed it in. She didn't have a fever, he pointed out. Nor was she wheezing like she had been a few days before when her cold got worse. The albuterol treatments and prednisone we'd started a few days before must be working. So I went sledding with Big A, while DH watched Little A nap. When I came back from sledding I was even more alarmed at what shape Little A was in. She appeared more semi-conscious than napping. She grunted when she breathed. Watching her, my stomach quivered like I was in free fall. I insisted we go home immediately. Not in a nice, rational manner, either -- I yelled at DH in front of our vacation housemates and then threw everything we owned into bags willy nilly before rushing away.

That uncomfortable scene at the rental house was made even uglier by how pointless it was. We hurried, but did so too late. We did not leave in time to prevent Little A from spiking a high fever while traveling through the mountain pass. I watched as her breathing became more shallow and labored. Finally she stopped responding to my voice and hardly moved when I pinched her. That's when we called 911 from the highway in search of the nearest emergency care center (which I'll call Podunk ER). Thankfully it was only a few miles away. She needed oxygen and fluids and a wide variety of drugs immediately. Only then, after many hours in the Podunk ER, was she in any condition to go by ambulance to the Bay Area Children's Hospital where she eventually spent five days for treatment of pnuemonia.

The scalp IV jokes also bother me because truly, that is my fault. I am the person who asked for it. Podunk hospital nurses blew three veins in Little A's extremities and meanwhile her heart rate, breathing, and oxygen saturation were looking poor, and still they just kept poking at invisible veins in the arms and legs without seeming to notice that forty minutes had passed without making any progress on the IV. Little A cried but had no tears. She was so dehydrated. I felt on the verge of having my own stroke as I watched everyone around the gurney. Given her hair-challanged state, Little A's scalp veins stuck out like big, juicy apples on an otherwise barren tree. I said, "Can you put a line in on her head, like they do in a NICU?"

Two of the nurses immediately said they don't usually do that. But another nurse steps forward and said, "This baby has waited long enough already. Let's do it."

Nurse Mike was the one person in the Podunk ER who seemed to be trying to make my baby better, as opposed to just monitoring her as she got sicker. He placed the scalp IV on the first try. He gave Little A fluids and drugs to help her breathing, administered ibuprofen and aceteminophen for the fever (rather than idly mention she could use some Tylenol without bothering to get the meds, like 3 other nurses did). So I felt even worse when the Big-City Children's Hospital staff maligned Nurse Mike's IV. Sure, the rest of the other ER experience had been mock-worthy, but not him.

The irony is that over the next few days I am the one (privately) scoffing at the Children's Hospital staff when it comes to IVs, because although her fez occludes after eight hours and needs replacement, damned if the hot shots at the big children-only facility can get another vein. Even the hospital expert on "tough sticks" can't do it. My child has ten unsuccessful needle sticks in her arms and legs over two days before they give up. Thanks to the scalp IV, Little A was stabilized enough to continue her recovery by receiving fluids and medication by mouth or injection. So to me, Nurse Mike is a real hero. His IV sure was ugly, but it did what it needed to do.


Thankfully, aside from IV drama, the nurses and doctors turn out to be great at Children's Hospital. While unpleasant or painful things transpire (blood tests, Xrays, antibiotic shots, breathing treatments, etc.) everyone is respectful and sympathetic about the wailing and flailing that occurrs on the patient's part. Considering we stay for five days and deal with dozens of nurses and doctors, the fact that I never run up against an obvious asshole is pretty amazing consistency of care.

By contrast, there is no such uniformity in anything related to the parents of the children that surround us in the hospital. On one side of our room is a three year old girl with a difficult-to-control lung infection. The father is soft-spoken, dotes on his child, and spends each night at her bedside. Each morning the mother arrives with perfectly styled long blonde hair, wearing expensive knits and stylish high-heel boots. She appears to be early in the second trimester of a pregnancy. She's gorgeous, but constantly loses her shit. She yells savagely at the anesthesiologist when an MRI gets rescheduled. She snits at the doctor for not having test results available immediately after the test. She complains to the food service people for bringing dinner trays to other patients in the room who are allowed to eat when her child is NPO. When in her presence, her daughter's mood reflect her mother's, so the child screams twice as much as she does when she is around her father. I theoretically sympathize with the woman and all her frustrations, because having your child in the hospital when you are pregnant has got to suck buckets. But she is so unpleasant and huffy that in reality, I mostly just think she's a spoiled bitch.

In the bed across from the daughter of the spoiled bitch is a three year old boy. His mother sits with him a few hours each day but heads out at night for work and taking care of the rest of the children. The boy's mother speaks good English, but her husband and child mostly speak Spanish. The boy has pneumonia. The father stays with him at night and most of the day, too. When they take out the child's IV the father seems oblivious to the fact that the boy must drink a lot of fluids. The boy goes seven hours without drinking a drop, and when the nurses realize this, there is a mad dash to cajole the child into drinking a lot of fluid immediately, lest they be required to reinsert the IV. Nor does the father bat an eyelash when his son lies on his belly on the hospital floor and plays with the garbage can reserved for soiled linens. The father also fails to notice when his son scoots out from under the curtain separating his "room" from Little A's. The boy grabs at a pile of dirty diapers waiting to be taken away by the nurses (for weighing, then disposal). DH attempts to get around the crib and grab the boy just as the child's mother arrives for a visit and screams "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"

I suspect the boy would recover faster if he were completely unsupervised, rather than watched over by his father.

Home Again

Yay! After five days at Children's Hospital Little A can finally breathe on her own again. It felt so good to spring her from the hospital, I can't even express it! (And right now the house is so full of dirty laundry and crap that I don't have time to express it. More soon ...)