Thursday 4/2

Let the games begin:

The waiting game.

The "he said, she said" different news from different people game.

The hospital food endurance challenge.

The zombie impersonation contest.

I feel fully immersed back into hospital life. Gone are all attempts at contacts, hair, or makeup. The maze of elevators and hallways is slowly becoming clear. I've mostly tuned out all the monitors beeping and phones ringing and hum of people talking in the hallway. It doesn't shock me to see all the tubes and wires on Natalie. I can even watch them draw her blood without flinching or crying even if she is. How can all this seem normal? I've been sucked into the hospital bubble and this is my life for now.

When we saw Natalie last night she was pretty groggy but not totally sedated. She's on an epidural that's got some pretty good stuff in it so she's mostly been sleeping. She gets a little fussy now and then, especially if someone is bugging her but so far she's calmed down fairly easily. It's still hard not to be able to pick her up and comfort her but so far she hasn't been beyond consolation.

She seemed to be recovering well from the surgery but she didn't pass any urine afterwards--all last night and into this morning so they were starting to get concerned. She's swollen up quite a bit all over. Her poor little face is super puffy. I hardly recognize her. Part of it is a natural reaction to being in surgery but part of it is from the fluid back up.

They needed to figure out why things weren't moving through. In order to do an ultrasound of her kidneys they cut away part of her cast on either side. (Imagine walking into the room and seeing some guy with a buzz saw standing over your baby.) Her kidneys looked good which means she was processing urine it just wasn't making it out. They were able to put some dye in her catheters to check out all the "plumbing" to see what the problem was. They figured out that one of the catheters was pushed up against the wall of a kidney which was preventing anything from draining out of it. They were able to adjust it and now things are flowing freely. I never thought I'd be so excited about wet diapers! She's still not able to eat but they've tried to give her sugar water in a bottle and she wasn't very interested.

Ben left early this afternoon. It's much different knowing that he and the girls are 4 hours away instead of 1 hour like last time. That's been the real challenge--being away from my other girls and now Ben. We'll make it. Just gotta take it one day at a time. I'm still hopeful that we'll be home by the end of next week but as always, we'll see...

I'm still on the waiting list for the Ronald McDonald house. The last two nights we stayed at a hotel a few minutes away. It was hard to leave last night but I knew we needed to get some rest. I slept solid for several hours and we were back here by 6:00 a.m. I'm going to use a "sleeping room" tonight. For parents of kids in the PICU you can have a room to sleep in but you don't get it until after 8pm and you turn the key in the next morning so it's a night by night deal. Not quite as nice as the hotel-style accomodations at Iowa but at least it's a bed and a shower w/o leaving the hospital.

I learned last time how much stuff you end up hauling around so I got this little rolling bag specifically for this trip. It's really nice because it's not a huge suitcase but it's big enough to carry all the snacks, water, books, etc. as well as the laptop (they have wireless internet in Natalie's room thus the super long post).

It's not exactly a Serta but it will do for a little snooze. This isn't the sleep room. This is a pull out chair in Natalie's room. Hopefully her bed is a little more comfy for her.