update 1-1-08

Today was a scary day.

At 6am we received a call that Rory was having some difficulty breathing and was placed on a ventilator to help her breathe and her belly seemed to become more distended (bigger for unknown reasons). They did a lot of testing, xrays, blood work, blood cultures, expanded her antibiotic coverage and had the surgical team take a look to see if they had any input into what was going on- they indicated that the current issue is not surgically related.

What we know now is that she seems to have some sort of infectious/inflammatory response right now- we don't know from where/what is causing it necessarily.
-her abdomen was a little more distended (but by evening improved)
-her sump was draining some bloody looking fluid which seems to have cleared since 4pm today
-The abdominal xray shows some improvement- this would be from the sump that is draining stuff from above, and the washes from below.
-Her chest xray indicates that she does not have a pneumonia as a source.
-WBC<1, plts 88, CRP 16, PT 30, PTT & fibrinogen WNL, hyponatremic, nonacidotic

So... we're all waiting and seeing what happens. She looks fairly comfortable- by about 3pm she was moving around, trying to get rid of the sump with her tongue, making movements towards the ET tub (breathing tube) as though she was trying to remove it.
We believe that she is a spunky girl and hope this will serve her well.

Alex meanwhile, spent the morning with Aliza and Emmitt and had a great time. Then he napped and spent the afternoon with Grandma Jill doing silly walks. Yesterday he spent the morning with Owen, Mike and Sanda and had a good time and the afternoon with Nana. He has been in pretty good spirits, especially considering that mama and dada have spent so much time at the hospital. We are trying to be home when he wakes and spend time with him each evening. We are so thankful Susan and Jill have been here so much over the past week. And of course to our friends. Thank you to all of our friends and family for your love and support- we appreciate it so much. (Since this isn't an academy acceptance speech we figure we can leave out individual names...)