Eat, Drink and Be Merry

Liv probably disgrees with my current title but she'll have to get over it for now.  The doctors took her off the ventilator yesterday morning and she was more than ready.  She's currently on 1L of O2 and all of her meds except for standard transplant regimen have been discontinued!  She was drinking water at a good pace yesterday and keeping it down but after the third round of respiratory therapy and some deep coughs, Livvy decided she doesn't want anymore to do with that for the moment.  Coughing and sitting her up is key to keep her lungs fully inflated with oxygen and respiratory therapy is every four hours.  

They just rounded on Miss Olivia and the plan today is to talk with CV (as in surgeons) and figure out if we can pull left and right chest tubes.  For sure, her arterial line will be pulled today as they no longer need it for monitoring.  She's starting another anti-rejection med this morning and her pain is being managed by a dose of tylenol every 24 hours and a small dose of morphine as needed.  Ideally she needs to start eating today but I wouldn't be surprised if she's not up for that given how much she dreads coughing.  

As for this whole transplant business it should be noted that Livvy likes the game of threes particularly around  big milestones as it pertains to her heart(s).  She went into heart failure three days after my 30th birthday but somehow managed to rally and get a new heart three days before her daddy's 30th birthday;  If that doesn't tell you that they're lifelong bffs, I don't know what will.  The little sneak managed to get extubated on his actual birthday and her first words were "thirsty, sleepy and pretzels"  Her new heart was transplanted on 11/27.  So now we celebrate her actual birthday on 3/27 and her new heart birthday on 11/27.  She tried to play the PowerBall lottery this week as well but got annoyed when they asked for proof of age so no dice. 

For all you faithful blog followers I'm sorry for the layout change again - Nonna was constantly complaining that she couldn't see the running historical for posts and while I was trying to be stubborn and dig my heels in, I just threw in the towel so I didn't have to have that debate again. So there you go Mom, it took 30 years but you wore me down.