Visitors and the Latest

A lot of people are asking the questions: do you want visitors and what can we do? So, I thought I'd answer those. We would LOVE to have visitors all the time. Unfortunately, you can not even enter Children's Hospital unless you have a green armband stating you are the parent of a patient. Therefore, we are only able to see visitors when we leave the NICU. They kick us out every night from 6:30-8 for change of shift. This is usually when we go eat. If you wanted to visit us, it would have to be during this time frame and be arranged in advance so we can plan for it. Also, because Travis' immune system is very compromised, we can not have visits from our little friends (any kids) or anyone who may be at all sick. To answer the second question...what can you do? Well, Roger and I have thought of one great thing we could use...refrigerated meals to reheat for lunch and dinner. We do have a little fridge here at the McDonald house to store food.

Today was a tough one emotionally for me. I think all the things that happened in the last week and the reality that our little one is having open heart surgery on Thursday hit me really hard. He is such a perfect little angel, it breaks my heart to think that his little heart is imperfect. He looks like I could just grab him and run out of there with him and he'd be fine. Even though I was a mess, Travis actually had a really good day. He tried to open his eyes to see us this morning when we got there but he is so swollen that he only got one eye open. He knows our voices and responds with tiny little movements. He looks so peaceful sleeping all day. He loves to sleep with his arms up by his face (like mommy!). His lungs are working so well that they are thinking of taking his respirator out for a few days (until surgery). He keeps trying to breath over it. That is a really good thing! We read him a few stories today and held hands quite a bit. I love holding his little toes. Daddy likes to hold his hand. He has a little half mohawk now because of the PIC line IV they had to put in his head (they tried to get it into a arm or leg but no luck). It looks really bad but Travis doesn't seem to mind. Daddy got the honor of changing a diaper today (no poopy ones though!). We tried hard to get a little family picture but the lighting is really bad in there and half the time you can't see Travis in the pictures. We'll try again. And one last thing...he has MY ears. Yay, proof that he is part mine!

Heading to bed now...we have a meeting with the surgeon and doctors tomorrow to review the plan for Thursday.