27 hours and going strong!

Esther is still off oxygen!  yeah!  She's doing great too!



She's sleeping so peacefully - with her new sleeping buddies - the giraffe I gave her to celebrate moving out of ICU and onto the Giraffe Wing, and the bunny was from a mother of two down syndrome adults (whom she adopted) who I met in the cafetaria - her son gave me a picture he had colored out of the blue and that began a conversation between the mother and myself - we also ran into each other the next evening - and the evening after that I got a call that she wanted to give me something - it was this adorable bunny that plays a lullaby!

The doctor actually volunteered an estimate going home date - this has never happened before unless I've bugged them for a time frame (and even then they wouldn't always give me an answer) - he said about a week - she needs to gain weight (good weight, not fluid weight), stay off of oxygen and I need to learn to manage her feeding tube!

Now, as of just a few minutes ago, we are one step closer to going home - she pulled out her feeding tube while I was changing her diaper, so I got to replace her tube and put new tape on her face!  I'm excited because it was really easy!  She only fussed a little bit, and it went right where it was supposed to!  I've had a couple of opportunities to give her her meds via the feeding tube, and check for placement, and from now on, I plan to do this for her.

I did have a great night's sleep last night - only one glitch...someone tried to smoke in the bathroom and set off the fire alarms at 1 am this morning - we're talking painfully white flashing lights in every room, and extremely loud alarms in sinc with the flashing lights - it's very effective in waking everyone up - that's the intended purpose, but when it's because of someone's stupidity, it's just down right painful!  I took advantage of the interruption and pumped for Esther and put the milk on ice, and by then the alarm had been shut off and I went back to sleep - all the way until 6 am!  That's a record 8 hours sleep for me!

So while Esther is doing so well, things at home aren't going to well -  due to food poisoning mentioned earlier, now every one of the kids that was down here this weekend has thrown up.  The first ones to get sick are recovering nicely, but most are in the throws of it still.  At this point, Daryl hasn't had it....yet (but I think he might be out of the woods if he doesn't get it soon).  I'm all over it now - even ate a normal lunch and everything went fine!

Here are some photos of the great wall murals here in the giraffe wing :







(these are photos from floor one, which we were on last week - I'll get more photos of floor two, where we are now, soon)