Four Little Ladybugs

Ava is back on a one hour CPAP (breathing on her own) trial after taking the morning off. She showed signs of tiring on her last trial and her early morning chest x-ray showed more signs of some atelectasis. Why this keeps happening, we don't know. She also had a massage from her PT specialist which she seemed to enjoy and also had a good amount of awake time a little bit ago. She is sleeping peacefully as I type this and doing okay with her current CPAP trial.

Whether to be hopeful or not seems to be a matter of opinion at this point. Doctors have been dropping subtle and not so subtle hints about their skepticism concerning getting Ava off the ventilator. We already know this. Another doctor that we talked to yesterday evening (who will be on day shift service for a week starting tomorrow) is more hopeful. While she obviously has concerns, she feels that we should be able to extubate toward the end of her week. Of course no one really knows how this is going to go except for Ava and God, and so far neither one of them is telling us. And it's hard not to be discouraged. Amy has mentioned a couple times that it would be nice to have a fast forward button. I'm going to have to second that.

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So here's some up to the minute, breaking news ("This just is..." if you will): CHOP just called and the Mito-Meta Array was completed. Ava has no deletions or additions on any genes. So... there's that. This would seem to further support the theory that we are looking at a mutation on a gene that hasn't been discovered yet. Still waiting on 2 tests on Eric's DNA and the muscle biopsy for AVA.

That's all for now...
Allan