Saturday, December 15

Yesterday we had a new company come out to set up Kathryn's oxygen and monitors. The first company was absolutely awful. Terrible service and we couldn't get accurate machines or supplies. Greg even went to fuss with the branch manager and he was told that oxygen is not a life or death situation. Excuse me, it is for Kathryn!! Well, anyway, we are done with them and the new company appears to be much better!! (If you live in Birmingham and are ever in this type of situation, may I advise, please do not use Apria Healthcare.)

Kathryn seems to be improving at the hospital. When she was admitted they started suctioning her nose before each feed. Evidently we will need to do that at home too. Because of the canula she gets very stopped up. I was chicken to do that at home because to do it you have to move the canula for a few minutes and I didn't want to be the cause of a desat. But it looks like it will be necessary - gotta put on my big girl panties!! They are also still doing the vibration therapy and the albuterol treatments at the hospital. They don't think that we will have to do those at home, but we don't know for sure yet. She will come home with two new medicines that are given in her bottle. Dr. Dicarlo joked with Greg and I that she can follow her four medicines with a little swig of formula! They are also still giving lasics in the hospital. She won't come home on those just yet, but she certainly could if needed (they are also by mouth or "PO" as they call it). At the hospital, she is already back down to half a liter of O2 so it looks like these things are helping her. They are doing chest xrays daily to see if her lungs look like they are improving. So far they haven't seen a huge improvement but they know that there is some since she is requiring less oxygen and her sats are back up.

Dr. Dicarlo said it looks like the earliest she would be back home is Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. They just need time to be confident that these things are working for her so that we are not right back to the hospital again! I think he seems to think that it may even be later next week before he would send her home, but we'll see.

Please pray for Kathryn!

Kelly