Ups and downs

So Caydence had a pretty rough night last night that carried through the day today. I got a phone call early this morning that she was really agitated and wouldn't settle. I went to the hospital to check on her and she looked really bad. Her heart rate and blood pressure were way up there and so was her breathing rate. She looked like she was working so hard to breath and was just exhausted. We gave her some more meds to try and calm her down but nothing really worked. She had me really worried because we made a change on her ventilator yesterday and I was afraid that she just wasn't tolerating it. The doctors came in and looked at her and really had no idea why she was acting the way she was. Her x-ray looked great and so did her blood gas. If she wasn't tolerating the vent wean then her x-ray should have showed signs of collapse which it didn't. Her hematocrit has been slowly dropping over the last week so we decided to transfuse her and see if that would possibly help her. Once the blood was almost done, Caydence totally changed. She started smiling and just looking more like herself. Her heart rate and breathing rate started to slowly come back down to her baseline and her work of breathing improved. Everyone was pretty surprised because they really didn't think that just being a little low on blood would make that big of a difference in her. I guess that was just her way of showing us that she just needed that little boost. I was so relieved when she started looking better. It is such a big week for her because we are trying to get her off the ventilator. This is the make it or break it week. We should know soon if we are going to be able to get her extubated. Like I've said before, all I want is to get that dang tube out of her mouth and get her moving forward. It really hit me today also that I only have one more month before I must go back to work. I know that Caydence isn't going to be out of the hospital anytime soon so it's really hard trying to think about having to go to work and having her so far away in the hospital. I know that I have to go back otherwise I will not have a job and we would not be able to keep our house and everything that we have at home. I never in a million years would have imagined that having another kid would change our life so much. This whole experience has been such a roller coaster for all of us. We never know from day to day what's coming next. We have come to realize that all we can do is just take it day by day and hope for the best.