An 8-day 24-hour stay

 We've got our Mira back home. Crazy girl went and had a really bad nose bleed Sunday evening (which, if you may remember, is what triggered the pneumonia that ended her up in the PICU for a month three years ago). SO FAR her lungs seem okay. The fact that she's already on serious antibiotics for her UTI, and one of them is one that is also used for pneumonias has probably given her a head start on fighting off anything that may have gotten in there.

Matt and I both got to go down yesterday for a short visit, and I snapped two pictures that were meaningful to me:

First, notice how nicely her fingernails look with her hospital gown. Her home nurse did her nails a few days before she ended up in the hospital, and the color is just perfect.

Second, notice how pretty her hair looks. When Matt and I were down there Monday, her nurse was in the middle of rebraiding her hair.

I know I've mentioned this before, but toward the end of our pick up week in Bulgaria over four years ago, Toni, our adoption lawyer on the Bulgarian side of things, called me at the hotel and said, regarding Mira, that she didn't care what milestones Mira made or didn't make, she just wanted me to make sure her hair was pretty. I still think it's pretty fantastic that her nurses at Gillette have a similar frame of mind, such that taking time to braid their patients' hair is important enough that they're 1) interested in doing it 2) actually do it and 3) are allowed to take the time to do it.

One of our referral photos for Mira, taken in early 2016, I believe. Her hair doesn't look as cared for in this photo!

Mira can't tell time

 

On day six of her "24-hour observation" visit to the hospital. Someone's got to teach this girl how time works!

We took her in last Monday to the Quick-Care Clinic, and they diagnosed a UTI, as we expected based on the few little symptoms she was manifesting (smelly urine, and when we checked her temp Monday morning, it was 98.3. Mira's our little "reptile" who can't maintain her own body temp, so to see her on the low side of normal without intervention means, well, something.) After sending her home with the expectation that we'd pick up an antibiotic later in the day once it was prescribed, her doctor actually called back asking if we could bring her in, as the antibiotic he wanted to start her on was just closely enough related to one of the two that triggered her huge anaphylactic response in the ER a few years ago (we still don't know which of the two it was, the *other* is the more likely to trigger a reaction, but she'd been on it for an hour before she started the second, and five minutes later was when her reaction hit) that he didn't want her to start it at home.

So I brought her down, and they ended up starting her on a *different* antibiotic, but still, essentially symptomless, the idea was to bring her home the next day. Except routine base-line blood work revealed all sorts of unusual (even for Mira) levels, so they've been chasing a variety of things since. Most likely, it appears that the infection had spread into at least one of her kidneys.

The above photo was during my visit with her this afternoon. Still not quite sure why they've got her on oxygen. There's no reason why her oxygen saturation levels should be low due to a UTI. But that's Mira for you.

Please notice, in honor of Toni (our Bulgarian adoption lawyer), how prettily Mira's hair looks in those delicate french braids! I am glad that the nurses at Gillette think that taking time to do patients' hair is an important thing to do. She is in such good hands when she is there.

As promised, more of Krassi's creations

 I just love these, and it's been fun to collect them, too, because Krassi is so proud to share them with me!

A lamb IN a ring in a ring!

This one he put right into my lap! :)

The "look away" is a protective mechanism from the institutional days that still manifests itself on a regular basis. :(

But he's still getting better and better and better at looking.

See how proud he is to share what he's doing? :)

A slightly different version....

Found late at night after all the kids were in bed!

Another double - sheep in two wedgits in the background and a cow in the green in the foreground.

He has a hard time holding them still enough for the camera as he holds them up to show me!