Fighter

Welp. Things went from bad to worse very quickly. As I sit in the corner of room 4065, Keira is resting peacefully due to her breathing tube and sedation. When I got here at 7:00 my mom told me about K's day, about how she was doing pretty well and seemed to gradually be getting better.
Less than an hour later I was wondering whether my mom was crazy, because if this is what "better" looked like than I just needed to bring Mom back to hold K some more.

Keira's breathing was so labored. The small reprieves during which her little abdoman was not working so hard and she was not grunting with each breath became fewer and farther between. Steph came to be with me (well, with Keira--she has cuter thighs), which was perfect timing, because she helped me keep my wits about me. I kept calling the doctor and nurse back, asking, "How bad does it have to get for you to do something more to help her?" I felt like I was watching my daughter drown. She was using her whole body to try to breathe. Her forhead was starting to turn blue. I felt like I couldn't breathe. They were holding off on intubating her because she still seemed to be getting the oxygen she needed. However, about this time, nurses, anesthesiologists, docs, and RT's started swarming like flies and the doc finally decided all of a sudden to intubate.

Intubation is scary. As Jeff said, she's basically in a medically-induced coma. The machines are breathing for her and will continue to until her chest cold has cleared up. Then they will slowly try to wean her off. I am relieved because she's peaceful now. She's not working so hard. But now we can't hold her and we just have to wait. Best case scenario: She's off the ventilator within a few days and is able to smoothly go back to breathing, eating, etc. on her own. However, you know that on an ordinary day, we struggle to keep Keira calm and regulated. We suspect that all of this trauma will be quite a setback, to say the least.

When we checked into the PICU last night, it was not lost on me that the ICU is the "last stop," of sorts, for kids who are terminally ill. Tonight, when we moved to a more "restrictive" course of action, it became real that losing Keira is a possibility. But I have to say that in this moment I'm feeling quite at peace about where we are.

After the crowd cleared out and K was resting quietly on the bed, she was naked aside from the various masks, wires and other medical accoutrements. I put a cheerful hat on her and put my favorite rainbow-striped "baby legs" (legwarmers) on her arms. I think it was an act of audaciousness in her honor. When I think back about how on earth her oxygen levels were still so good when she looked so bad, I choose to believe that that was K's little spirit. She is such a fighter and was working so so hard that she was able to keep everything working in spite of her discomfort. So proud of my little fighter.