Almost ready to go home

Last night was much, much better,and for the first time since Wednesday we all actually slept through the night. As much as anyone can sleep through the night with nurses coming in and out at all hours, that is. Who draws blood for lab work at 4:00 AM anyway? I mean, really, that's just a cruel way to wake someone up. But aside from the random interruptions all was well, and Callie awoke in good spirits, expecting to go home today. In fact, we all did, and we had our bags packed and ready to go by 10:00. But alas, it was not to be. Every time they would try to wean Callie off the oxygen, her ox sats would drop, causing them to have to start all over. It wasn't until about 8:00 tonight that she was able to come off of the oxygen completely, and by then we had figured out that she wasn't getting discharged today after all. But the good news is, she has been at 100% since coming off the oxygen, so unless things go terribly wrong during the night we hope to get out of here early tomorrow. In spite of the oxygen issues Callie had a really good day today, and she spent most of it out of bed and moving around. Her teacher came to visit her and brought goodies, and she spent much of the afternoon playing with her new toys and working on a 150 piece puzzle in the playroom, which she was determined to finish and finally did about 7:00 tonight. She was also feeling much more sociable, so she spent a lot of time on the cell phone and on skype calling all of her friends and family.
The hospital had some therapy dogs who came to visit the patients, so we went downstairs for Callie to meet them. Evidently she hasn't completely overcome her fear of dogs, because she would only pet the ones who looked familiar to her. One was a golden retriever who looked just like our Chloe, and the other one a shitzu who resembled Aunt Shari's dog Kipper. Callie ate very well today and was back to her usual sassy self, sticking her tongue out at me when I was trying to take pictures and doing silly poses. It's good to see her acting like herself, she's been in so much pain over the past few days. A few times she would actually start yelling at us in Chinese, and could only speak in one or two word sentences or baby talk.

It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad, it was almost as if she was in so much pain she forgot how to speak English. Her English has progressed so far since she has been home and she is so completely fluent that we forget that she has only been speaking English for a little over four months. It's so amazing to think that mere months ago she was living in an orphanage with a damaged heart, no mommy and daddy to take care of her, and very little hope for her future. Now her heart is repaired and she is surrounded by people who love her and can't imagine life without her. And best of all, she can look forward to a long and healthy life. Talk about happy endings, it doesn't get any better than that..