The Handleys!: It's been a long day

Day 6

Today was a mixture of good and bad. Ava is doing very well, but has her moments; boy does she have her moments. She gave us quite a scare today. At some point after we tried to sit her up and put her back down, a lot of loose congestion from intubation came up and she started gagging. She started turning dusky and quickly turned blue and her oxygen rapidly went down from 100 to 9. Her little body turned limp and she almost passed out. It was the worst I have ever seen her. Our nurse was there, but was a little frozen about the whole thing, so I ran into the halls yelling HELP! A lot of nurses came and they got some good oxygen going and suctioned her mouth. She recovered but was very traumatized. We were all traumatized. They also changed Ava's dressings on her back for the first time and so we got to see what her back looks like since surgery. It's not pretty, but the wounds are healing very well and have no signs of infection. Her kyphosis (hunch back) looks so much better! It's not completely where it needs to be, but is very improved from this single surgery. We are so glad about that. She still has this bizarre rash all over her body from the antibiotic they gave her after surgery and her liver levels are still high, but they have gone down since yesterday. The main concern with this reaction is that she may not tolerate many antibiotics in the future. She has had them before, but they say this could be the first sign of her body building a hypersensitivity to them. On a good note, we got to hold her today! She seemed very happy to be held and was being so darn cute. She has started making ma-ma sounds. I love that of course. I think she will have a better day tomorrow because she had some really good moments today.