In with the Good Air

As I mentioned before, the wife is sleeping on a pull out chair in Annabelle's Hospital room.

I am essentially sleeping on a couch down the hall in a meeting room along with a couple of other parents.

It must have seemed alarming to them when my phone rang at midnight, I jumped up and said, "I'll be right there . . ." and disappeared down the hallway.

Turns out that Annie's oxygen is a little low.

This is the monitor she is attached to.


The green line on top is the heart rate, the yellow line in the middle is respiration's and the blue line at the bottom is the oxygen level in her blood.

The way they measure her oxygen level is by taping a little glowing gizmo to a finger or toe:

The goal for the blue line is anything above 90 and she has been dipping down to 88 and 87.

There can be a number of reasons: 1) she currently has a cold 2) sometimes babies are a little lethargic after surgery 3) laying in bed all day usually does not exactly induce a lot of heavy breathing

Holly called because the nurse wanted to know if we preferred to have the oxygen tubes put up her nose or if we would prefer them to use an oxygen mask that they sort of lay on her chest and point in the direction of her mouth. It seems pretty clear to me that the tubes up the schnoz is the most effective way to go so long and Annie-lu-who would put up with it and the nurse agreed.

First of all, the nurse took a mini vacuum and jammed it up Annie's nose to suck out anything she could. If you were 5 months old and had just had surgery, would you like someone vacuuming out your nose? Probably not . . . Annie agrees with you.

Next, a little medicine to help her sleep. And then the oxygen tubes . . . . which she enjoys a little more than the vacuum but not by much.

The other thing about getting oxygen piped into you is that it can sort of give you a little buzz . . . sort of feels like an adrenaline rush . . . which doesn't help sleeping too much either.

If you have a moment, please pray for Annabellu's breathing, oxygen level and ability to sleep. At this point in the journey we want to be removing tubes and wires - not adding them.

Please pray also for mom -the nose tubes really aren't that big a deal but they are one of those universal symbols that tell the world that something is wrong with you . . . like walking around with a band-aid for your lungs plastered across your face . . . and it is a little hard on the wife after a long day such as yesterday.

Thank you again for your prayers.