Oops...3 out of 4 Thanksgivings spent in an ICU

This will be brief because I need to go to bed. I slept at the hospital Tuesday night when we had to admit Kiera to the PICU around 10PM. She is doing better now than she was at home last evening. We had reached our limits for keeping her SATs up on our equipment where she was de-satting on 6 liters and after piggybacked nebs (3 of 5mgs each in an hour). Now she is on the "big ventilator" (the 840) and increased O2. She spent 24 hrs on continuous albuterol nebs and we are trying to stretch her to a do-able neb schedule for home. As long as nebs can get stretched tonight, we may get to try putting her back on her home vent tomorrow and hopefully get her home as soon as Friday. I guess Kiera just wanted to spend her Thanksgiving with the many, many health care workers for whom we are thankful this Thanksgiving and the last four. It has left us with a very empty, quiet house tonight and yet, again, another holiday spent in a hospital. Good news is that her preliminary results from her respiratory viral culture seemed to come back negative on all the big viruses they test for. Bad news is, I guess we don't really know what has caused her to have such a severe hiccup. We are still waiting for a final culture from her trach aspirate which could give some idea. Of course, she is on steroids, antibiotics, etc.

Cute things: Last night when bagging her at home through some bronchospasms, my mom was here, and Kiera started blowing kisses to grandma and the nurse WHILE I was still bagging her. It was the weirdest "Rose Bowl Parade" image. Then, in the hospital this morning, the first trip since she could walk and was healthy enough to stand, she stood up in her crib and started messing with the touch screen hospital monitor above the bed that monitors her O2, heart rate, etc. She must have thought, "well this is a TV I haven't seen before." I would have cracked up if she had figured out how to change their settings without the nurse seeing just to see the reaction.