Day 10

First we need to say, "Thank you!" All your prayers, words, and meals :) have been such a blessing to us. We have truly been humbled by the way everyone has reached out to us.

Ariana continues to be a little fighter. Her jaundice is getting better and she is down to one light, she had 2 over her and one she laid on. All of her head ultrasounds have remained the same, which means the bleeding has stopped or not gotten worse. So they were able to start treatment for her heart murmur, which has been giving her hard time breathing.

When the heart murmur is resolved, her oxygen levels will improve, allowing them to soon take her off the ventilator. If the valve in the heart is still open after this treatment, they do another cycle of treatment. They continue this treatment provided there is no bleeding in the brain, which they monitor. She has lines going in her stomach that will come out soon and she will get a regular IV. When these are all resolved - we get to hold her :) We look forward to that, even though it's at least a week or so away. So for now we simply look forward to the jaundice being resolved completely so the last light can go and her eyes can be uncovered. Right now her eyes are covered and we rarely get to see them uncovered.

This process is all about “baby steps.”

Story:
The other day we were at the hospital and her oxygen levels began to drop. She was uncomfortable, Carlos wanted the nurse to come over right away and she was with another family. I, trying to always stay calm, told him to calm down and the nurse would come over – her machines were beeping. (Ariana has one nurse assigned to her only, the nurse knew we were with her and was being kind to another family) Anyhow, Carlos is flipping at this point telling me not to tell him to calm down, his daughter is having trouble breathing and I want him to calm down. I calmly ask the nurse if it’s normal for her oxygen levels to be going down to the 70’s and she calmly said no and came over. (I worked at a hospital and know the little sticker that they put on to read the oxygen isn’t always on right and also she may drop and bring herself back to normal levels so I wasn’t just ignoring the fact that she could be having a hard time.)

Anyway, the nurse did increase her settings to help her breathe better. Carlos was ready to leave at this point, that was enough for him, he was worked up and mad at me. I explained to him it was called, “balance.” We balance each other out, where he flips and wants to “demand” results; I feel I will be better heard by asking and understanding the situation before “requesting” results.