Sunday 7/10

It was a slow weekend here at Egleston for Audrey. Since Friday's post the focus was mainly on getting her recovered and stable after the surgery where she was once again eating and drinking normally and keeping it all down so we could be certain that her medicine that she takes orally is getting fully absorbed. Although she started drinking fluids yesterday, today was the first day she really started fully eating normally again. So we're finally getting somewhere. The plan is, now that she is eating/drinking again, to wean her off of the IV drips that were given in the meantime to cover for the oral medicines, and slowly alter her pacer settings back down to more normal minimum heartrates. They have already backed down her minmum hr from 140 to 110 in three different times over the weekend and we'll continue down that path. Once Audrey is on only the oral medicine again and the pacer settings are where they need to be, then she'll just need to be arrythmia free for 24 hours before she can get out of the CICU and over to her own room in stepdown once again, so we're looking at 2-3 more days here. It's such a slow process but Amanda and I definitely want to feel confident about things before heading out of the warm and cozy confidence of her being fully monitored.

On the bright side, today Audrey really regained a lot of her personality once again. She was talking a ton, smiling, able to sit up and play with toys and really seemed almost back to herself again. Yesterday when I held her in my lap she just seemed very stiff and out of it, my guess was because she might have still been in some pain. Today she really was more fun and active, which was really refreshing since we hadnt seen that since Wednesday, prior to the Thursday morning surgery. I'm guessing the next couple days in CICU will be tougher to keep her somewhat calm in her crib as she regains all of her energy.

This week will be challenging as I also try to balance all of this with doing work again after a couple of weeks of solely family focus. We'll see if its possible to do both.

The outpouring of support and offers of help during this time has been awesome and so appreciated. Even if we haven't taken you up on it, please know that we are grateful.

-Mark