Daniel Gets His Wings

Yesterday the decision was made to go back to Cincinnati. And this morning the transport team and a neonatologist came to Greenville to get Laura and Daniel. My mom likened the team walking down the hallway of the hospital to the Charlie's Angels, and I must admit that when they got there I did have a feeling of being rescued. This is a picture of Daniel yesterday, yes he's resting somewhat but he's about 2-3 months back from where he was a week ago. It was definitely not an easy to decision to have the family fractured again, but all you have to do is replay the scene from Tuesday night over and over in your head to know we are doing the right thing. Laura said the ride was a bit bumpy up there and Daniel woke up a few times but overall did really well with it. She said the whole team got to work on him as soon as they got there and afterwards he looked rested and better than he had the past week. I was speaking to someone today about the situation that we've been faced with this past week and explaining what had gone on and figured out a good analogy for Greenville vs Cincinnati. It sort of relates to how a doctor here explained how he would stand up in the middle of a conference and yell out that Daniel needs a trach. Actually the director of PICU went to the trouble of getting the opinions of 12 different doctors that said yes Daniel definitely needed a ventilator to progress any further. Anyway, I believe the doctors in Cincinnati are the ones giving the lectures at the conference and writing the publications in the journals while the ones here in Greenville are the ones attending the conferences and reading the journals. It's funny because whether Daniel needs a ventilator and a trach is not really the issue here. My mother and mother in law telling the nurse at the desk that my son has a heart rate over 240 is. Those are the kind of things that make you wonder what would it be next time and would there be someone to let someone know? I could cite quite a few more examples, but to keep it civil that will do for now. We have no idea at this point how long Daniel will be there and how far he really is set back. We do know he is going to have to be weened from the ventilator, he will have to be weened from the Versed and moved back to the Ativan which he was originally on, then have that weened. He is going to have to have his feeds analyzed and adjusted accordingly as well as have the therapist look at him as no one paid this any attention at the hospital here. We have come to realize it's just going to take as long as it's going to take. 6 months, 8 months a year seem like a long time when you're living it, but in the grand scheme of things and the average lifespan of a person, it really isn't that long. Hopefully updates from this point on will continue to get better and better as it seems we bottomed out this past week.