hannah....queen for the day...

well, because i am in charge...she will be the queen for many days!

sweet baby hannah was a rock star today!

we arrived at 745 this morning to the new Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children at Pres/St. Luke's in Denver...it has only been open for about 8 weeks, so EVERYTHING is brand new, clean, cute, and very well planned i might add.  it is an entirely new hospital experience for us, even though, technically, it is the same hospital where we spent 2 long weeks in June.

we checked in, hannah was alert, happy and eager to get into her hospital gown to get things started.  she weighed in at 11 lbs 10 oz and 23.5 long.

vital signs were good

heart and lungs sounded good

our plastic surgeon, Stacey Folk, arrived in her usual energetic fashion, she brings such a positive energy and outlook everyplace she goes.  she was excited as to how big hannah had gotten, even in the 4 weeks since she had last seen her...at the "first try" hospital

we met with the anasteologist...whom we had just met for the first time this morning, we like her a lot too...she was incredible with hannah!

then we talked to the pulmonologist as well...she too was set to go and have a look inside Hannah's lungs.

her nurse Bruce took care of her the entire time...easy breezy.

(by the way, if you haven't noticed, all of Hannah's surgeons are female, and both of her nurses are male)

oh yeah, we asked another ENT to join in the fun to TRY to get tubes in Hannah's ears...she did TRY...however, Hannah's ear canals are still way too small to get even the smallest tubes in there, so we will have to wait again on that one.  she did however clean out Hannah's ears while she was in there...i guess they were pretty waxy...thanks schmitz family...my daughter now has a high wax buildup as well...yuck!

the look at Hannah's lungs showed things we were kind of expecting.  it appears that her larynx is swollen due to aspirating her reflux. 

as each portion was completed one by one...had the GI doc been able to make it, we would know why she is still refluxing...until then, medication and keep her upright.

lip adhesion, release of her frenulim (tongue tied) and were done, all pretty smooth, for the most part.

although she was incredibly hard to intubate, the extabation was relatively simple.  we are staying in the PICU for the night to watch her breathing.  for the most part again, she is doing good.

she is in pain, i can tell that,  so she is not getting any sleep, nor am i.  i opted to stay here with her tonight, but they only allow one person to stay, so john went home...he is working Thursday.

i had hoped to get a photo or two on here tonight, but i started writing this about 4 hours ago, and, well, i am exhausted.  she looks good, will show you soon.

thanks again for your well wishes...john, steph & sweet baby hannah