A Healing Graceland

One fun thing to do while sitting around Grace’s crib in the hospital is to watch the scar across her chest beat, knowing it’s a true beat, not the imperfect mechanism she had just four days ago.

But even a newly repaired heart can show a little hiccup every now and then.  Last night, Grace showed a short bout of irregular heart rhythms.  Even though we jump every time one of her monitors make a noise, this was nothing of major concern and was chalked up to low potassium and sodium from her decreased eating yesterday and double doses of diuretics.  She is now on IV fluids to help balance this out and her rhythms have been fine today.  For those of you that have seen her daddy dance, you know that she comes by this irregular rhythm honestly.  She had a heart to heart with daddy to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

Overall, Grace is feeling much better today, and returned to some of her usual behavior and activity.  She managed to decrease the bloat thanks to some new gas-passing meds (thanks Squib Wrangler!)

She finally got her hands back, after her hand IV and arterial line were removed, and she celebrated with equal opportunity finger sucking, chomping and saliva covering.  She rolled much more to her right side and was reaching and playing with all her favorite toys.  Despite her PT consultant being a stranger, she recognized the therapy lingo and immediately chose to protest and not play.  She thought a break from hip helpers equaled a break from head control exercises.  

She had her hearing test, which showed mild loss (just outside the normal range) in her right ear and moderate loss in her left, although she had perfect middle ear tests.  This points to fluid in her ears, so we're waiting on an ENT consult.  The audiologist felt that Grace may well need tubes placed in her ears, but we’ll cross that canal once Grace fully heals from this adventure.

In the next hour we’ll be moving to the step-down unit.  This is a good indication that we are within days of heading home.