No News is Good News

They say no news is good news.  I think in our situation - at least this week - that applies.

The past couple days have been fairly quiet.  Slowly but surely, Josephine's kidney function is improving.  She is now off of the epinephrine, and the sedative/pain medication has been decreased to only a very small dose.  Her heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturation levels have remained stable.  The doctors have been optimistic, but very non-committal.  Josephine is getting things accomplished on her time...and despite the fact that we're anxious to get her off of the ventilator and moved into the step down unit, Michael and I are working really hard at the patience thing.  (Not always an easy task, and especially so when we've not been able to hold our sweet girl for nearly two weeks now.)

During our time at CMC, we've managed to go through no less than 20 nurses.  Although we definitely count some as being better than others, we've noticed that they all tend to observe a few key things about Josephine and our current state.  From these comments, we've compiled a rather telling list of the top five things heard in Josephine's room over the past three weeks:

5. Have you been getting sleep?  Are you eating?  (The sleep one is usually directed at me, so I can only guess I've been looking a bit rough as of late. To be honest, I'm not totally sure how to answer this question any more...does it really count as sleep if you dream about being at the hospital? :p )

4. Josephine.  Is that a family name?  (This is usually followed by "What are you going to call her?")

3.Wow!  She's got really good pulses. :)

2. Ding, ding, ding! (I'm sure I mentioned the equipment alarms in a prior post.  They are absolutely relentless and incredibly annoying.)

1. Look at her long fingers/big feet/cute nose!

Hopefully sometime very soon we''ll be able to add one more key statement to the list: "You're going home."  :)