The 12 day hospital stay

So after Cicily was stable, they did a chest x-ray to determine if the ET (intubation) tube was in the correct place. The x-ray showed some cloudiness in her left lung, indicating pneumonia. So Cicily was on the ventilator, intubated, and sedated for 5 full days while the pneumonia spread to the other lung and then went away. While she was intubated, she had some special visitors:

Maya could actually come visit this time as the hospital doesn't have age restrictions for visitors in the summer. Cicily has a shirt on that her cousins all signed. What a great get well card!

One of our favorite families! It'll be interesting to see if Jerome is happy or sad that Cicily has her "necklace" back.

On Tuesday July 7th (almost exactly 2 months after it was removed), Cicily had her tracheostomy re-placed. We would have liked to give Cicily a real chance to learn how to handle her secretions without a trach and without being sick. She never really was 100% healthy the whole 2 months her trach was out. However, her episodes just got too severe and her chances were running out. Now we'll have to figure out what works to thin her secretions and she'll have to have her trach capped more and figure out how to cough and breath and not get scared with it all. (Damn that lack of white matter!) It still seems that the trach will be a temporary thing in Cis' life. Chris and I are actually quite relieved that it's back. It's funny, as much fun as it was to hear Cicily's voice when she laughed, I was also happy to hear her trach laugh once again.

The day after her tracheostomy, Cicily woke up from sedation in pain and flailing wildly. She had become addicted to the drug fentanyl that had kept her sedated for the past 5 days. It's an opiate drug, like heroin. So, like a heroin addict, Cicily had to be put on a detox regimen. She was given decreasing doses of the drug methadone to get her over the addiction symptoms.

The above picture was taken the day she woke up, the only time we saw her smile for the next 4 days. It's the first time I can think of in her life when Cicily hasn't just bounced back quickly from a surgery or illness with a smile - it was disconcerting.

Maya was of course the first to get Cicily to smile again! She even got a laugh out of her. One morning we brought Cis' dog Lucy for a visit. That plus Maya won lots of smiles!

After 12 days in the hospital, Cicily was discharged. Because of the addiction and not moving for almost 2 weeks, Cicily was still unable to sit up on her own or even hold up her head. The night she came home, I ran out and bought her this chair she could lounge in and completely recover in.

Cicily has been SO happy to be home. She's been smiling almost non-stop. I think she's happy to be alive and healthy.