Tuesday evening

Emma Kate got her 1 week MLB scope this morning, and although the pictures look extremely bizarre and just plain wrong to us, Dr. Rutter is actually quite pleased with the way things are looking. He did have to remove a small piece of granulation tissue, and there is quite a bit of a "figure 8" effect in there. The pig bronchus to her upper right lung lobe is pretty dramatically compressed, but he thinks that will improve over time, and we have to remember that the rest of her lungs are getting ventilated soooooo much better than they ever have before in her life, so it shouldn't be any huge concern. He plans to scope her again 1 week and 2 weeks from today, to monitor granulation and healing progress. If we weren't having to keep her on TPN and deal with feeding issues, we'd likely be discharged to RMH pretty soon- the progress from this surgery is absolutely stunning when you compare it to the timeline we dealt with the first go-round... it's just tragic to think of where we could be sitting if we had been here first... argh. Hindsight is a painful thing.

Emma Kate did quite a bit of walking around this afternoon, but she was a little slower than normal, having had the anesthesia from the scoping in the morning. She was just settling down for a nap when the transport guy came to get her to go down to the ultrasound department to get a renal exam done. She was a trooper throughout the procedure, and hopefully we'll get a report from that by the morning. They want to make sure her kidneys are normal and there's nothing going on there that could be the cause of the mild hypertension she's been dealing with for a few weeks.

We had a great dinner together in the cafeteria tonight, Emma Kate was actually very enthusiastic about the meal starting about 45 minutes before we had the food to sit down to, and she did great, eating much more than she has for us recently! She still has a ways to go before we can go without relying on the TPN to keep her healthy and healing well, but this was a wonderful step in the right direction!