Megan's Journey

Today is Megan's third birthday, and although there was a lot of uncertainty last week regarding how we would spend today, I'm so thrilled we were able to spend it at home!   Megan was discharged on Friday on a pretty aggressive diuretic regimen and with a lot of planned outpatient follow up to make sure we don't have a reoccurrence of her pulmonary effusions.  We will have some labs and xray done this week in Kalamazoo, and we go back to Ann Arbor in one week for additional follow up there.  We continue to pray that this current plan keeps her healthy and strong so she can stay home. I thought a lot about her upcoming birthday and all the things it means to me and to our family, but now that the time has come I am at a loss for words. All I will say is that the past three years have been the most difficult, amazing, terrifying, wonderful, challenging, and beautiful years of my life.  Megan, I love you to the moon and I couldn't be prouder to be your Mom. PRESEN...

Those who have worked or trained in a hospital (or who have spent an extended period of time in one) know what happens on 7/1.  It's the annual turnover for new residents; the old residents move on to their next year of training, and in comes the brand new class of resident physicians hot out of medical school.  So, things are moving a bit slower than normal today, and as we wait for the new team to come round on Megan. I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to post an overdue update even though we don't have any new info on the plan for today yet... Time slips away here in the hospital, and (maybe due to lack of sleep) it's a little hard to recount exactly how things progressed over the past few days, but I will do my best: As we mentioned before, Megan's chest tube was pretty effective at draining the fluid causing her right pulmonary effusion, but she had also developed a moderately sized effusion on the left side as well.  Over the past few days the tea...