We're Home!

After 7 days in the hospital, we were finally discharged yesterday morning and headed straight for home!  But I wanted to fill you all in on the last couple days of Katelyn's stay at Dallas Children's, too.

Katelyn's blood test Thursday morning showed continuously decreased CRP levels - ESR levels remained about the same, which is to be expected.  Her new CRP levels were a 3.3 - so while we were excited to see such a drastic change (it dropped by more than half), we knew we were not low enough to go home, and we prepared ourselves for two more days in the hospital.

We spent alot of time Thursday in the playrooms again.  Her mobility continued to improve and she crawled or walked with almost every toy in that room for 1.5 hours straight!  Of course, she was fairly wiped out after that and took a great nap!

As she was waking up, we had a knock on our door.  We opened it to see a man holding a pink stuffed animal and a balloon.  He explained who he was and gave Katelyn this GIANT pink stuffed sock monkey doll and a Tangled balloon - oh, and a get well card, too - all from her teachers at MDO!  I thought it was SO sweet of them to go to all the trouble of tracking us down to deliver my baby girl a little happy - we really do LOVE Katelyn's school!  Katelyn promptly named her monkey AhAh because that's the sound a monkey makes and they have become best friends.  In this pic, she's taking yet another nap with AhAh and you'll see her appearing in more and more pics in the Facebook album.

We were surprised to hear from our peds team that they'd like to repeat her blood test a day early, on Friday morning, to see if her levels would drop enough to go home!  So we spent the rest of the day Thursday anxious about the results from Friday morning's test, torn between really wanting to go home and wanting our baby to be healthy when we finally got to.

Derrick stayed with his cousin Lauri Thursday night and I took a shift at the hospital with Katelyn.  I prayed like crazy that night, after a VERY long ordeal getting her to sleep, that Katelyn would supernaturally sleep through the miscellaneous night-time interruptions and I am super excited to say that she really did!  Even though it seemed we had more "visitors" during the night Thursday than ever before, she slept wonderfully!

Friday morning's blood tests showed her CRP was at 2.0 - the breaking point for being able to go home.  We were insanely nervous about whether that would show enough improvement for our doctor's to be comfortable sending us home, but we finally heard the words we'd been hoping for:  "Looks like you'll be going home today!"

since we've been home

We had a very uneventful drive home, just like we hoped it would be!  Katelyn slept more than half the trip, cuddling the whole way with AhAh.  She has done amazingly well at re-adjusting to our normal schedules.  She is napping well during the day and slept from 8pm - 8am with no waking or crying!  I was so surprised by that I got nervous and sneaked in her room early this morning to check on her!

She is walking very well - she is consistently walking from her playroom into our living room, still with a small limp.  She is playing and eating well, too.

follow up

Our major prayer concern at this point is all the follow-up that comes with this condition.  She will be on oral antibiotics for the next 30 days at least.  But, the medicine tastes TERRIBLE and we are having trouble getting her to take it.  Please pray that we will find a good mixture with something to help cover the bitter taste - we've tried chocolate syrup and orange juice thus far.

We have a follow-up appointment with our regular pediatrician this Monday afternoon and a follow-up with her surgeon back in Dallas in a week or so.  Please pray that both of those go well and that we see only signs of improvement!

thank you!

Derrick and I want to say again how incredibly grateful and humbled we feel for/by the responses we've gotten from you guys.  Friends we haven't seen in years have contacted us about praying - family from across the country, too.  Everyday we have been amazed at your love and support for our precious little girl and we have been incredibly touched by it all.  Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you've done during this crazy time.  We love you all so much!

last post for a while

This will be our last regular post for awhile.  We look forward to watching Katelyn improve every day and will try to update after all her follow-up appointments are done.  We want you guys to see the end results of all your prayers for sure!