Daily Dose: Monday, March 2- part 1

Hope: day 85

Sorry there was no post yesterday, things were kind of "in limbo" so we wanted to wait until this morning to give a better update.

Yesterday was a very rough day for Hope. Turns out she does have an infection. Yesterday she was very, um, irritable to say the least. She was agitate and made sure EVERYONE knew it. In fact, she even yelled at Aunt Em, no joke. Apparently Aunt Em's departure did not sit well with Hope, but do you really blame her?

Hope does have an infection afterall. The doctors are a bit befuddled with the fact that Hope has had three e-coli infections, but because her urine cultures came back positive they think it might have started there, as opposed to the intestines. The doctors may order a renal ultrasound later this week to see if they can find anything. At this point they are not planning on going in for surgery, thank goodness. If there appears to be something in her bowels they will most likely look for it when they do her "take down", aka "reconnect".

As you can see from the picture, taken this morning, Hope is back on the ventilator. But this is only a small step backwards, not a longterm. Last night her heartrate slowed down quite a bit and she had a few "episodes" so the doctors were concerned that she was getting fatigued. They put her back on a ventilator and she seems to have stabilized out from that. She will probably stay on the ventilator for a few days while she fights off the infection. She is doing well with the vent, they have it set at 30 breaths per minute and she is breathing over it at about 50 breaths per minute, so that is great.

It is also very good to see her so calm and alert this morning. Yesterday she was so agitated and "combative" that her calm demeanor today is so nice to see. While we do miss the Elephant, for many reasons, this now gives Hope a chance to model more of the Hope Collection. Look for more items int he near future.