Out of the Blue

When I am writing an update at 2am, you know it can't be all butterflies and sunshine. Our family had a wonderful day today, with a surprise visit from old Los Alamos friends, the Desko family. They lived up the street from us back then, and it was to Cheryl that RJ proudly announced Abbie's arrival by crowing "We got a grill!!"

We spent several hours down at the Outrigger Canoe Club, which afforded us a spectactular view of postcard-worthy day. We kept Abbie under the umbrella all day and for the most part kept her well-shaded. Or so we thought. She was kind of whiny the last 30 minutes we were down there, and all the way home, which is very unlike her. Once we got home it didn't take us long to determine the source of her discomfort, because it was looking right at us. The bright pink shade of the right side of her face let us know that we hadn't protected her from the sun as well as we thought.

We found some good aloe, got her all settled and then let Genevieve take over while Ray and I took the twins to a UH baseball game. We arrived home at 9 to find Chase helping with Abbie, who was on three liters of oxygen and stuggling to breathe. Her sats were in the mid-80s, and the OJT nurse part of me kicked in as I started barking orders at everyone.

Turns out she had crashed about 10 minutes before we arrived home, at the beginning of a feeding. We quickly gave her a nebulizer treatment and kicked the concentrator up to 5 liters. The neb helped get her sats back up into the mid-90s fairly quickly, so I then started a fast drip of water, vitamin C and some essential oils.

I switched her to a tank of oxygen because I don't trust the concentrator to actually put out a high flow of O2. All that excitement was five hours ago, and Abbie and I have yet to settle down. She is trying hard to sleep, but I keep having to wake her to keep her sats up --either to suction or to move her around. The highest the regulator on the tank will go is 4 liters, so I am trying my best to just make it through the night on that. The last hour has been particularly challenging, as even with a second nebulizer treatment, I just can't keep her sats up. She's running about 101 degrees, and is pretty exhausted. Please just pray for her to bounce back. This all came out of the blue, so I'm hoping it's just a little bump and not a form of the head/chest infection that has been going around lately.

I know that right now Abbie's angel is before the throne of God (Matthew 18:10), but I also know how powerfully your prayers have trimmed the sails in this journey. So, although it's been a busy night, I am at peace knowing she is in very good hands!