Back in Our Arms!

Oh, happy day! Ernie and I have been reunited with Vita at last! Vita has been doing well without the breathing machine, and they did remove her oxygen mask this morning... but she's still not completely ready to breathe on her own. Instead, Vita is now wearing little prongs that go into her nose. As you can see, the current breathing / tubing situation is much less intrusive, provides less support to Vita (so she's doing most of the breathing on her own) AND WE FINALLY GET TO HOLD HER! Here's Ernie withVita. And here's me with Vita. What a huge difference it's made for all three of us to be able to cuddle again. We all feel so much better. When I first held Vita again, we both cried for a couple of minutes, then she fell fast asleep in my arms. Human touch is the best medicine (well, along with crazy anti-toxins and stuff). Now that Vita has the tube out and the mask off, she was able to demonstrate to us that she's able to move her head back and forth from side to side. This means we can play peek-a-boo again! And Vita can turn her head to the camera to flash a big smile! So this is all very good news, and we're doing (and feeling) much better, but we're really not out of the woods until Vita can breathe with absolutely no support. Currently, Vita is breathing well, but she still has a "floppy upper airway" which is a residual effect of the paralysis. Additionally, when babies have a tube down their throat for two weeks, they cannot cough up their secretions. So Vita has some gunk in her lungs, and she's not opening up her lungs fully with all that gunk in there. The doctors dont want to take off Vita's nose prongs until her lungs clear up. However, while the nose prongs are in there they can't feed Vita through the tube anymore... so she really can't get any food dripped into her stomach until the nose prongs can come out. The doctors and respitory therapists are doing something called CPT, which is just some tapping on the chest to help loosen things up. Hopefully tomorrow her lungs will clear up and then the nose tube will come out and her feeding can resume. Until those things happen, we're STILL in the intesive care unit. I'll be so happy to transfer upstairs to general care, but it's looking like that might not happen until early next week. PS - Happy anniversary to me and Ernie. We've been married six years today (and together for 16 years). Times like these can be tough on a relationship, but even after all these years, there is no one I'd rather be stuck in a hospital with.