Another Trip to the OR... and the PICU

Right out of the OR

No, I don't mean Oregon... I wish I did. In our world, OR is always Operating Room. Few knew that Norah was going back to the OR this past Monday for the rest of her granuloma removal and for replacement of her left ear tube that was plugged. The bad news? The granuloma had already grown back enough to block her upper airway again. ACK! The good news is that our ENT was very happy with the way it came out this time, and is confident that it won't be growing back quite so soon. Have I mentioned lately how much we love our ENT, Jeremy Meier? He's just so great.

We are always nervous for general anesthesia. We knew it would be a quickie but that doesn't matter. I always cry after we drop her off at the entrance to the unit. The walk back to the waiting room is a long one.  We had been expecting the whole thing to be outpatient, but he wanted to admit us to the PICU for an overnight stay. Such is life.

As usual, it doesn't take long for word to get out that Norah is back in the unit. One of the attending docs told us that she had gone to Norah's old room, only to find some other family in there. Ooops! This was not the first time that's happened. Even Harper is used to running in there, and has almost barged in on other people in there during other stays. Ooops!

In the PICU, Norah is always on the team with Nurse Practitioners in lieu of Medical Residents. This is a very good thing. They usually put kiddos on this team when they are recurring patients. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we fit into this category. They were all impressed with Norah's progress, commenting that her lungs sounded even better than her previous visit... which is good considering she had rhinovirus that last time. Norah was spoiled and snuggled, and Jeff and I were able to catch up with some of our favorites that we haven't seen in awhile. We were also teased for being back (cough-cough-Co-cough-ry-cough-cough), which of course makes us feel more welcome. :)

We spent the night in an almost zero-privacy room. Some call it the dungeon. Some call it the cave. I often call it "cootie corner" because that's where the "dirty" kids go during the winter months of rampant viruses and cooties. There were no cooties there this time. Norah was beyond happy to see her friends and fans, but she was not so happy about trying to sleep out in the open. She was restless, and so glad once we got back to South Davis.

As much as we love the PICU and consider it one of our home-away-from-homes, it's good to be back at South Davis. We're now looking forward to seeing how well she can do transitioning to the home ventilator. Hopefully we won't have any more obstacles along the way, but we know there is no guarantee of that.