Surgery Stay- Day 36 Real food and a Going Home Date

We had a fantastic night again last night. Nothing better than a good night sleep. We got up this morning to some great news from the doctors. They put her feeding tube up to 50 ml's, they will put it up to 55 ml's tonight and then 60 ml's tomorrow morning. 60 ml's is the goal for her age, weight, ect. So then they will watch her on Friday and make sure her body can handle it and if so we can go home on Saturday. Yay! She will be coming home on the feeding tube, in fact they may keep her on it until she has the bone marrow transplant done just to make sure she is healthy and fattened up before that. We are so excited to have a date to come home. That was the best news ever!  The bad news for the day is they checked her CBC (complete blood count) this morning and things are very low again. So they are going to let her be today and hopefully tomorrow unless she suddenly becomes symptomatic. And then the plan is to give her a blood transfusion right before she leaves the hospital on Saturday to give her a big good boost before she comes home. The blood transfusion will take 4-6 hours. So it won't be until later when we get released. It is Jaxon's birthday on Saturday so we don't care when we go home, but it would be great if we could get home for his birthday! The other good news the doctor gave us was she can have whatever she wants to eat now. So we started out the day immediately ordering from room service. She ordered fruit loops and milk for breakfast. (she actually wanted cheesecake and the mean mom that I am, I told her not until she had something else in her tummy first. So she started with fruit loops.

I guess breakfast always comes with a bendy guy. They told us because she has been here so long and has not gotten to eat, she could ask for a bendy guy every time she orders just to get a good supply of them before she goes home. I guess in the morning they come with a joke, today's joke was "What is a cheerleader's favorite food?     Cheerios!  Right after breakfast she wanted a piece of cheesecake. She has been waiting for weeks for this moment!

 She was so excited. But she only ended up eating one bite. After breakfast they weighed her and she was 49.5 pds. Wowzers. She almost gained a whole pound from yesterday. It has gotta be that food she is eating... We had a pretty lazy day. She ended up taking a mid morning nap, part of her being tired, is the low blood counts. I had to go to a couple of appointments again about Insurance and financial stuff. Yuck! She took several walks herself today. She wanted to go walk the halls. We did a load of laundry, fun uh? We had a morning visitor, that I was very excited about. Aunt Jeni and her mom Alice came. Alice had bought a gift for the kids at home and for Ari. It was really sweet of her to do that. Ariauna was sleeping when they came so we visited for a bit just us, and then I tried to wake Ari up. Well that was the wrong thing to do, because then she had an attitude. She wouldn't smile, look at them, wouldn't take her face out of the blankets. She was a really pain in the butt. I felt horrible, because they had taken the time to come visit and bring her a really nice gift and then she was ornery. I apologize for her, I am so sorry!  She has done that before when I try to wake her up. So apologize for that! She ended up ordering chicken nuggets and fries and of course another bendy guy for lunch. She only ate 1/2 a nugget and like 3 fries. They say it will be like this for quite awhile, little meals. I guess that is what happens when you have eaten a good meal for 7 weeks. We spent some time this afternoon trying to clean up to go home. I wanted to post pics of her room before we took it all down.

 Isn't her room beautiful?  The first week we did not hang anything, but then when we realized we were going to be here for awhile, the nurses gave us permission to hang things up. Well we went a bit crazy, but it was beautiful and bright and every nurse that came in commented on how bright and cheerful her room was. So thank you to everyone who sent things to make it looks so beautiful. Mr. Sikes class at school, the Activity Day girls at church, the whole primary in our ward made cards, and for all the other pictures friends and family colored and brought her. I can tell you tonight, her room looks mighty plain and boring. I should explain the signs about things that suck. Ariauna was having a rough day one day when Holly- the child life specialist came in. Ariauna explained she was tired of getting IV's, and frustrated that it takes so long to get her medicines. So Holly went to her office and came back with these signs so Ariauna could write things down when she was upset and frustrated.

This picture is just trip one to the car, I am sure we have at least one or two more just like it. For dinner she ordered Macaroni and Cheese and a sprite. She actually ate about 1/2 the mac and cheese. This evening Brent and Karen stopped by again to visit. They were up here at the U to do something for school for Karen. They brought us one of Karen's graduation announcements, they are so cute!  Our Bishop Daryl Wright and his wife Leah came up tonight too. We all had a good visit and Ariauna was in a great mood. She was sitting up in a chair doing word searches. We had a great visit with them all. We watched the Disney station and went to bed a bit early tonight. Sorry folks this was not posted in a timely manner, I will admit I fell asleep typing it.....  Here is shooting for another terrific day tomorrow. One day closer to home!