Can’t believe it is already Friday!

Miriam had a very restful night last night. And so did mommy and daddy. Daddy slept at home for ~6 hours while mommy slept with Miso and had the most sleep yet. (She slept a little at home the previous night and got to spend time with Hildi and Cecilia).

She had an early morning X-ray before both doctors visited. They and the radiologists were very happy with the progress on the chest tube. It is now off suction and if that goes well the plan is to remove it after lunch! Then she will move out of the ICU to a new room, and Dr Williams thinks she can go home as soon as tomorrow! We thought we still had a few days left.

We spent the morning with Pappateaux before he had to go to the airport to fly back to New York. They drew some pictures together.

She continued to perk up all day, and napped often. First she asked for Daddy to nap with her:

And later she wanted her Mommy:

We got to video chat with Aunt Bekah and Kate! Kate showed us her Sleeping Beauty ballet, which was remarkable for not featuring any sleeping for all the beauty.

In the late afternoon they began to get ready to remove her chest tube. Another X-ray showed further progress in the draining, and the cavity sealed nicely. So the surgeon removed the tube and her “pain ball” (a small local anesthesia which had been washing over her incision area). Then came time to remove the central line in her neck. Even though this should have been the easy part, it ended up a little more tricky…

Miriam did not like the nurse pulling on the stitches and the mounting holding the tube in place. Plus she really needed to poop, had just had the tubes removed, and was getting pretty tired in general. So she cried quite a bit. With all the distress, the site where the chest tube had been began to fill up the bandage. There were some tense moments while we finished removing the stitches in her neck and tending to the wound (which was not expected to bleed).

We got the bandage changed, the surgeon and trauma PA came back to take a look, change the bandage again and get a chest x-ray to double check the inside. It looks like the chest tube had been blocking a bit more of fluids and blood from the procedure that had not yet drained (part of why they flushed the anti-clotting fluids in yesterday), and her motion/crying/coughing loosened it enough to drain. The chest x-ray showed that there was indeed less fluid and, more importantly, no air in the cavity. There was also no indication that there was any bleeding or injury internally (confirming the assumption based on the color of the fluids).

So we had a few traumatic hours there, but she is doing really well now. We’re remaining in the ICU for tonight as a precaution for monitoring, but after a few hours of checking, everyone is still thinking she could go home tomorrow. We’re definitely not anxious to leave. We would rather Miriam have a better memory of the hospital as her last experience, and we want to make sure she has sufficient movement, strength, mobility, and independence before we leave.

But speaking of… after all of that (and after dinner), Miriam said she needed to go potty and walked to the potty (with Daddy just holding her hands) and .. um … was … let’s just say very successful. Very. But that is very good news. She has felt much better since and is playing and talking now, even though she knows she needs to go to sleep.

I have a feeling she’s going to be very playful tomorrow. We’ll visit the healing courtyard (below) and the playroom, and maybe Cecilia and Hildi will join us. Mommy is going home to sleep and Daddy and Miso are ready to rest too.