A Whirlwind Day

What a difference 24 hours makes! When I left Elizabeth last night to tuck in the girls at home, she was stable, but pretty miserable. She wanted water which she couldn't have, and no position was comfortable. His residency (read: sleep under any condition) training made Dr. Daddy the best candidate to sleep in the ICU meanwhile, I got to comfort sweet hearts at home and then had the luxury of my own bed.
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I arrived this morning to learn that today would less like a spa day and more like boot camp for our sweet girl. Her post-op chest x-ray showed her lungs hadn't fully inflated so she needed to take deep breaths (painful) to try to expand them, AND she needed to sit up and get moving a bit to help her get rid of some of the post-anesthesia air-bubbles which were pretty painful! Let's just say she was not excited about "the plan" coming from rounds.

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Fortunately, our girl does really well with incentives, so between daddy and I we got right to work: a sip of water after 3 deep breaths on the "incentive spirometer", a movie & a fresh set of french braids for sitting up in bed, another movie for moving to the chair! Well, her hard work paid off. She got through a bedding change, a surgical dressing change, fought through icky nausea all morning and finally held down a croissant! This afternoon she was delighted to talk all about E.T. with our sweet friend who arrived with lunch and treats in-hand, enjoyed some reading, snoozed through 4 movies, got her arterial IV taken out, moved from the "pain pump" to oral pain meds and she is now discharged from the PICU & resting comfortably in our private room in new Pjs after a dinner-time visit with Granna, Ruby & Hannah!

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You can imagine how tired she is! It was a banner day for our girl. It's hard to believe she's only 1 day away from open heart surgery and doing so well! God is so good!

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Please continue to pray for deep, restorative rest for our Weary Warrior and her exhausted parents. Pray for protection from infection, good pain management and for clear and healthy lungs. Pray for Hannah & Ruby's hearts to be filled with peace and assurance as they ride this roller-coaster with us. Finally, continue to pray for supernatural hope and trust surround and sustain us. We have been down many harrowing paths and it is easy to guard our hearts so we're not blindsided by heartbreak.

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We are so thankful for your emails, texts, messages of encouragement and prayers. We are so amazed at your care for us.

With so much love and humble gratitude,

Sara, for all of us