I should get to writing everything that has happened in our family over the past month, before it becomes even more of a blur. I've told the story dozens of times already, so most of the fat is trimmed off the spoken version, but I'll elaborate here for posterity's sake, probably over several posts.
The most important news to report on, would be that Ashley is home from the hospital and doing really well. She's on a little bit of oxygen and a couple of other medications, and she will be for the next while, but she's gaining weight and doing all the other things babies do, and we couldn't be happier about that. She had us pretty scared for a while there, and now that she'll be considered a cardiac patient for the rest of her life, I don't suppose that those feelings will ever fully go away.
As the story goes, we brought Ashley back to the Children's Hospital, on Sunday the 24th of February, because she had thrown up that morning, and that had caused her to go somewhat pale and limp afterwards. She didn't seem too troubled by it at all, and we had already had some experience with bringing her in for issues that turned out to be nothing, but we had a really strong feeling that we should be bringing her in, so we did.
The most important news to report on, would be that Ashley is home from the hospital and doing really well. She's on a little bit of oxygen and a couple of other medications, and she will be for the next while, but she's gaining weight and doing all the other things babies do, and we couldn't be happier about that. She had us pretty scared for a while there, and now that she'll be considered a cardiac patient for the rest of her life, I don't suppose that those feelings will ever fully go away.
As the story goes, we brought Ashley back to the Children's Hospital, on Sunday the 24th of February, because she had thrown up that morning, and that had caused her to go somewhat pale and limp afterwards. She didn't seem too troubled by it at all, and we had already had some experience with bringing her in for issues that turned out to be nothing, but we had a really strong feeling that we should be bringing her in, so we did.
Tammy and Emma were both sick with flu symptoms at the time, so initially, we all thought that Ashley must have caught the bug too. That was ruled out, and her vital signs seemed on par, but she was breathing really fast - over 100 breaths a minute, and she kept that up for more than a few hours, so there was still something going on. The tests they performed on her at the hospital got more invasive as the day went on, and it only seemed to aggravate and worsen her condition, so we started wondering if we had done the right thing by bringing her in. They asked us if they could do a lumbar puncture on her to test for meningitis, and after all the risks inherent in that procedure were explained to us, we became very worried people. Our concerns were that this was starting to sound more and more serious as the day went on, but at the same time we wondered if the trauma of all the tests they were doing to her could be causing her vitals to decline, and that we might be subjecting her to all of this for nothing again. It was hard to know what to do, but we trusted the professionals, and they went ahead with the lumbar puncture.
Everything went really well with the procedure, and Ashley was laying on her tummy and resting when they let us back into the room. It was going to take 48 hours for the lab to get any readings on the fluid they took from her spine, so we got settled in and began the waiting game. After a little while, Ashley began crying again, so I went to her bed and picked her up to try and settle her down a bit. She started dry heaving as she had been on an I.V. all day and had nothing in her tummy to bring up. During this, she also started going blue, and just as I was about to yell for the nurses, they all came running in, along with several other doctor's and respiratory therapists. They couldn't get her colour back with what they had in that room, and then she stopped breathing altogether, turning from blue to gray, so she was rushed to the trauma room, and that's when things started getting really serious.
Everything went really well with the procedure, and Ashley was laying on her tummy and resting when they let us back into the room. It was going to take 48 hours for the lab to get any readings on the fluid they took from her spine, so we got settled in and began the waiting game. After a little while, Ashley began crying again, so I went to her bed and picked her up to try and settle her down a bit. She started dry heaving as she had been on an I.V. all day and had nothing in her tummy to bring up. During this, she also started going blue, and just as I was about to yell for the nurses, they all came running in, along with several other doctor's and respiratory therapists. They couldn't get her colour back with what they had in that room, and then she stopped breathing altogether, turning from blue to gray, so she was rushed to the trauma room, and that's when things started getting really serious.
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