Home Sweet Home

After some unexpected issues involving medication, Callie was finally released to go home around lunchtime yesterday. Evidently, the medication she is taking for her pulmonary hypertension (hopefully temporary) is not readily available at a pharmacy near us, and the hospital was only able to secure us a week's supply. She has to take it every 6 hours around the clock for awhile so they wanted to make sure that we would be able to get it before they released her to go home. Finally, they were able to work something out and we were on our way, with Callie clapping gleefully all the way out the door. As far as childen's hospitals go, Egleston is a wonderful place, but we were all more than ready to go home and sleep in our own beds. We arrived home to discover that Maili had done a little decorating, with some help from Aunt Kelli, Lacey, and MeMe. Callie was so excited to see everyone and to see the welcome home posters with her name all over them. They did such an awesome job of keeping Maili and Holt occupied that I don't think they even missed us while we were gone; to them it was like one big slumber party. We are so grateful that they were here to take care of everything at home so that we could focus on Callie's needs. Between Jamie's family and our church family, we were blessed to have all of our needs met. People from church delivered food in our absence, and tonight not only did they bring dinner but we found out that they will be providing dinner for the rest of the week. This was not only a pleasant surprise but a true blessing; we arrived home yesterday to find that our 14 year old range had died an untimely death. It will probably be the end of the week before a new one can be delivered, so we are so thankful for those who have been so gracious and helpful to us when we needed them most. Callie has continued to amaze us with how fast she is improving; I actually had to insist several times today that she stop dancing because I was afraid she would injure herself. She's on some pretty effective pain meds and she doesn't seem to realize her limitations. If she doesn't slow down I may be forced to cut back on them a bit before she hurts herself. Her doctors told us to treat her incision area like a broken bone for the next 6 weeks since that is essentially what it is; they had to cut her breastbone in half to perform the surgery and then wire it back together. Callie, however, didn't get the memo. She thinks that she can do whatever she wants to do, and she has no intention of slowing down. We're wondering if her newfound energy is the result of her heart finally working at full capacity; since the repair it seems that she doesn't actually tire as easily, other than the pain from the incision which slows her down when the meds wear off. It is obvious that her lungs are still very weak, and she is still very congested and on frequent breathing treatments. Her nighttime coughing has improved somewhat, but she still spends a lot of time coughing during the day. Hopefully this will improve once she has some time to recover. We had been concerned about pnuemonia, but her chest xrays were clear when she left the hospital and we hope to keep them that way.