See ya, Seattle!

You know what I really like? Being out of the hospital. Brandt concurs, as do Tanner and Wade. Sunday after discharge, Brandt took a 3 hour nap...a far cry from the one hour ones he had been living on in the hospital...and then slept like a rock all night long after playing hard with Wade in the RMH playroom.

Monday, we took the boys to see Paddington 2, just for kicks and to get us out of the room for a while. Wade loved it...it was a really cute movie! Brandt, on the other hand, took in a few handfuls of popcorn, threw a few handfuls more, then fell asleep on my lap for the remainder of the movie! I was surprised he could sleep with the sound as loud as it was, but I guess he still had some catching up to do!

We had our outpatient appointment on Tuesday, where we did labs to make sure his sodium was staying okay and an X-ray to check up on the fluid around his lung. Afterward we met up with the cardiac NP to discuss the results. Sodium was a little bit down, but that was the result of too much diuretic, in a roundabout way. We had him on 10mg, 2x/day, and it was drying him out really bad...to the point that the night before, he'd been awake all night long crying for his sippy. He ended up draining it four times throughout the course of the night (that's 32oz total). After the first two, we ran out of milk and had to give him water, which is something of a no-no, because it dilutes him too much, and can cause his sodium to drop. So we've turned down the diuretic a skosh, in hopes that it'll help the issue as a whole. So far so good.

His X-ray looked good, as well. The fluid from the left side is completely gone, and what's left on the right side has decreased still further, which means that his diuretic is doing its job. Even with his sodium being a little down, this good X-ray was enough for the NP to tell us that we're good to go home!!

We got back to the Ron-Don around 2:30 after those appointments were done, and hung around a little while for the 4th birthday party of a little girl going through radiation. It was pirate themed, and both the boys thought it was just the coolest thing. While we watched the boys play, we discussed our going-home plan, which included a trip to Oregon to see Tanner's folks. We were planning to leave today, after packing up the room last night, but we spur-of-the-moment decided to just pack up and leave that evening!

It took us about an hour and a half to empty the room, bag up our linens, vacuum, sweep, and scrub every surface. We left the house about 4:30, promptly forgot to pick up a couple new prescriptions (whoops...but nothing we can't do without until we get home), and got on the road! We met Shawna for dinner on the way out of town, which put our arrival at about 10:00 in Gales Creek.

So now our plan is to stay here until Friday or Saturday before we head home. Wade is off riding around with Tanner and Uncle Tyler and Carver, and Brandt...he's starting the process of catching a cold. Poor kid has a fever this morning. We called Seattle about it, and for the time being they don't seem too concerned. As long as it doesn't get any higher, we should be okay, and for the time being, it's minimal.