Seattle Children's Hospital

Thanks to everyone's prayers, Ellie has been showing improvement. This morning, the swelling was still about the same as yesterday, but the pain and the infection level had subdued quite a bit. She has been almost back to her normal cheery self (except for when she has to take medicine) and has been eating and drinking okay. She even had lunch (pasta and strawberries), so the doctors put her on an oral antibiotics instead of the IV to see if she could handle it when she went home. She may be coming home tomorrow if she does well tonight and tomorrow morning!

Other than the being sick part, staying a few days at the Children's Hospital hasn't been too bad for Ellie. It is a super nice hospital. They have free massages for the parents, two Starbucks locations, playroom for the children full of toys, craft supplies, movies, and games, and even a swimming pool! Oh, yeah, and did I mention they have free massages for the parents? Ellie gets to watch TV all day, drink juice and eat crackers, color and paint, play with play-dough, and gets undivided attention from mommy and daddy!

Ellie has been having a hard time taking the oral medicine (Tylenol, ibuprofen, and the antibiotics). She's always done really well with that at home, so the pain in her throat (mouth) must be pretty bad if she is refusing the take medicine. But she is so much like her mommy and can tolerate pain really, really well, so it has been a little difficult for the doctors to discern how much pain she is in.

To give you an idea of how well she has been doing, it took the nurse about 2 full minutes to get her IV line in. The whole time, she was whimpering but kept her focus on the movie that was playing on tv but didn't even cry while the nurse kept going at her arm with the needle. It was going in and out back and forth for what seemed like forever to me (the nurse decide to change the vein in the middle and turned the needle 90 degrees while it was still in her arm), and I even started to feel a little sick watching it (and I am pretty good with needles, having donated blood and been certified in drawing blood and everything). But she has been a champ with all the prodding and poking she's been through, and the doctors and the nurses at the hospital are very impressed with her (she has been called "the best patient" a couple times).

To make things easier for us, James has been such an angel. He's been staying in Ellie's room with me during the day since he has to be breastfed. I took a little portable baby swing to Ellie's room, and James just sits there and sleeps all day! Because Ellie's condition involves respiratory problems (she had a cold before developing the abscess), she is in "quarantine." She can't be out of her room and can't have any visitors that are 10 or younger. Alden and Eli hasn't seen her since Monday morning other than during a brief Hangout session before bedtime. They have been behaving really well at Lara's house where they have been staying. We were so blessed to have come to Seattle where we have friends we could rely on. Lara's been taking care of Alden and Eli since Monday, and Alden doesn't even want to come home when I go over to pick him up at night. It's been so great to have her help and to have Al and Eli behave relatively well to make things easier for everyone.

Hopefully Ellie will finally get to come home tomorrow. We can't wait for things to calm down around here. Ha ha.