Back to school.

Well, Ari goes back to school tomorrow. We have her out one more day just to make sure she's good on her feet, but she did really well over the weekend. She walked a good portion of the time we were at the mall, although she was still in some pain by the end of the day. Not bad overall though. Hopefully she'll do well tomorrow.

First full day home

Ari came home around noon yesterday (12th) and has been doing well since then. I've been stuck at work since she first got home, since I was called in from the hospital. Ari has been doing well and has been in a good mood most of the time. She's doing much better than last time. Hopefully she'll be up on her feet by the weekend. If so, there is a Chuggington event at Toys-R-Us that she'd love coming up on Saturday.

Note (2/23/2012): This call into work I got was the reason I started looking for a new job. I got a call from my new boss at the hospital while Ari was still in the bed in pain. He wanted me in the office right then. Then when I got to work (after Ari was home, I wan't leaving her at the hospital), he didn't want me leaving early for the next few weeks, even if I was needed at home. I understand that there were big problems brewing at work, but the company never seems to handle them well. While they were very understanding as a whole of my situation, this event (added to all the layoffs and program cancellations) showed me that it was definitely time to look elsewhere. I posted my resume that week.

Update

Ari is doing well overall. She's off of the IV meds and we're getting her to eat some. She's having some jolts of pain where she jumps a little and is in pain for a minute. She is doing better overall, but she still has a little to go.

Not going home tonight.

She's still working on getting off of the IV meds and eating better. The doctors want to keep her one more night. Now I just need to figure this out with work...

Getting ready for tonight

Ari will definately be in the PICU through the night. She's been awake for a while watching some of her shows. I'm staying the night as only one person can stay. I get to sleep on the chairs in the waiting room, which actually isn't as bad as it sounds. The arms come off so you can set up three chairs or so in a row to make a makeshift bed. They give you sheets as well. I don't really mind as it lets me stay close all night. The waiting area is within sight of her area in the PICU.

In the PICU

We're back with Ari in the PICU right now. She's doing as well as could be expected. She's swollen from all the fluids, which is normal. She's in and out of sleep and in a good amount of pain. They have her on some strong meds for today which they are just giving her an extra dose of now that she is awake. We'll probably be in the PICU through the night.

Out of surgery

Dr Ain just came by to tell us the surgery was done. It took a little longer than expected but they were able to get the rod replaced with extra anchors and they did the extension so it will be 6-9 months from now before she will need her next surgery, as long as there are no more problems. We can go see her in about 30-45 minutes.

Just got an update

The doctors have started the surgery as of 8:30. They'll give us updates every hour so I'll update everyone here as I hear anything.

Starting

I just took Ari back to the operating room. They put her under and are finishing up the prep for the surgery.

Round 2

Tomorrow at 5am we are heading back to Johns Hopkins for Ari's second surgery. They will be removing one of the four rods in her back and replacing it. They will also be adding some extra hardware to help keep it from coming loose again. Unfortunately this was a possible complication with all this, but Dr Ain says he has a few tricks to help when this happens. None of them are anything they would want to do first time around. I'm guessing they go for the minimal hardware approach first and add on as needed. I'll keep everyone up to date on here as things progress.