Rambling Rhodes

Daylight?

Zoey suddenly decided Sunday morning that she was no longer in need of the oscillating respirator, so she was put back on the regular respirator shortly before we arrived to visit her before noon.

By 9 p.m. that night, doctors had taken her off the respirator entirely and placed her back on a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine, which is basically a nasal dual prong system that pushes air into her nose, while she provides the actual breathing reflex. She was briefly on a CPAP machine over a week ago, but she had so many apnea spells she became exhausted after a day and had to be placed back on a respirator.

This time, however, she's been doing remarkably well.

It seems so weird a mere 48 hours could witness such a drastic turnaround, but as I said and heard numerous times, these steps forward and back are entirely expected.

One night a few evenings ago, the night shift nurses placed a tiny red ribbon on Zoey's head and took some pictures. The crazy thing about the pictures is they're 3" x 5" photos, and we were given the actual ribbon which, if you place the ribbon over the ribbon in the picture, it's the same size. So, the Zoey in the picture is the same size as the Zoey in a 3" x 5" photo, which drove home for me once again how entirely small she is.

My home office desk is littered with hospital visitation stickers, and the garage is littered with parking ramp passes. . . and it's not even the end of January yet.

It feels like all this started eons ago. And yesterday.

Posted by Ryan at January 24, 2011 08:57 PM | TrackBack