1 step forward and 2 steps back!

Hallie is continuing to fight. Her iv in her leg ruptured her vein this morning and kept pumping the fluid into her tissues. Her leg was hard as a rock, the size of a tree trunk, with no ankle and no separate toes, all the way to her knee-- pretty scary! She is thankfully recovering from it quickly, mostly due to all of the massaging Uncle Cody did while I was at the doctor with Tucker. We have put a PICC line in to protect her veins more, especially since we started her on TPN (iv nutrition) which is extremely hard on the veins. They took her down this afternoon, sedated her and used flouroscopy to get the line in. They did take the tube out of her nose (mostly because she kept pulling it out!), which is good news. One less cord to get tangled up with! Tonight, she started twitching and jerking around and itching all over. We finally decided that she was having an allergic reaction. We started narrowing things down as we gave her Benadryl. That stopped the violent jerking, but not the twitching or itching. I had it narrowed down to one of the drugs in her epidural when we gave her Nubane. That took away the twitching and most of the itching so that she could finally sleep. She kept waking up itching though, trying to scratch her eyes out, so we decided to discontinue her epdiural pain meds. We will continue to give her iv pain meds as needed, but we have to be careful because she did this once before with morphine and stopped breathing on us. We shall see how the night goes!

Hallie did walk to halls 3 times today-- almost to their goal of 4 times a day! She is very weak and her poor little arms and legs shake and quiver as we walk, but she is determined to do it! She is being so good through all of this! I thought I would have a lot harder time with her through all of this, but as long as I hold her hands, she has let them do what they need to do. Her daddy flew in this afternoon and was able to spend a few hours with us before going and getting the boys. Tucker was all smiles to see his daddy! We haven't seen him in almost a month. It was a little weird having him sititng here at the hospital with us-- almost like a dream!

Poor Hallie still is not able to take anything by mouth. The nurses have heard a faint gurgle twice in her intestines all day, so hopefully that means they are starting to wake up a bit. Hallie is determined that she is going to eat. She has been asking for a drink or treat since just a few hours after surgery, but today she is getting creative. I was going through some of her entertainment things and she asked me if I could get her something. I said sure-- what? and she said a treat. A little later, she asked for some quarters to put in her purse, so I gave her some. She then told me we needed to take a walk-- only she didn't want to walk to the playroom, she wanted to walk to the vending machine she had seen as they wheeled her up after surgery-- the girl was so drugged, how in the world did she notice it?!!!!! Tonight she kept telling me she wanted to get out of bed-- she can hardly sit up by herself, so I asked her where she wanted to go-- the chair? Oh no, the cupboard where my mom put some snacks for us to have while up here. I guess she saw them when my mom was here with her last night. I am really hoping to be able to feed her on Friday, but it is going to be a LONG couple of days. I have a feeling we are going to be here longer than a week!

Through it all she is keeping her spirits up and is being incredibly brave. Her daddy is bringing her brothers up to see her for the first time tomorrow and she gets to go on a wagon ride to see all of her grammy's friends that help put the telethon together here. My mom is on the executive board and they are having a big meeting with all of the Costco managers from around Utah. Hallie's story has been shared many times with them, so they are excited to get to see her. It will be good for Hallie to get out of her room for more than a minute or two!