The Joys of the Johnsons: Crazy Week in Review

So, as many of you may know, we spent Christmas week in the hospital taking care of our baby Rochelle. I will describe a little bit of what we went through and where we stand today. I just want to say first and foremost, thank you to everyone for the prayers sent to Rochelle. God healed her little body and she is back at home safe and sound.
On the early morning of Monday December 22, I started to notice that Rochelle was showing shows signs of increased effort of breathing, and her rate of breathing was increased. I hooked her up to the portable pulse ox machine (which measures her oxygen percentage) in her body and she was in the 80's (which is suppose to be 90-100) at 1/4L on her concentrator. I hooked her up to the spare oxygen tank and increased her flow to 1 liter and her sats were still low and not going up. After doing everything I could at home, I called Shane at work and told him to come home immediately knowing that we needed to take Rochelle to the ER. I called my small town ER and told them what was going on (she was in Respiratory Distress) and knew she needed to be closely monitored to see what might be happening. They quickly life-flighted her to Dell's Childrens Meidcal Center in Austin (Shane got to fly with her while I packed up the house and all of her equipment, the dogs and their kennels to stay at my parents and drove to the hospital from Yoakum) Thank goodness that my parents were already watching Brielle that weekend which worked out perfectly for her to stay there a few extra days.
When I arrived to the hospital her x-rays were showing signs of atelectasis (collapse of the lung), and increased vasculature, so they wanted to start her on antibiotics right away in case of a possibility of pnemonia, and for the respiratory therapy to provide albuterol breathing treatments every 4 hours and CPT (chest physiotherapy) to break up the secretions in her lungs.
The next day (Tuesday morning), the doctor ordered to increase the amount of lasix (to remove the extra fluid off of her body) from once a day at home to three times a day. He also ordered to give her a potassium replacement replace what is getting lost while on Lasix, continue CPT and albuterol, continue her on an IV with D10W (because her sugars were a little low), and place a PICC line, continue the antibiotic regimen, and place her on a CPAP machine to help her breathing.
Wednesday (Christmas Eve), the plan of the day was to take her off her breathing machine (CPAP) and put her on a high-flow oxygen, try to start feedings again through the NJ tube (nasojejunum) and keep the stomach empty, change the fluid pill (Lasix) to twice a day instead of three times a day, continue IV fluids until we know she can tolerate her half breastmilk/half formula feedings, continue CPT and albuterol, blood gases and an x-ray to be drawn in the morning.
Thursday morning (Christmas Day), the plan was to the increase the feedings by a small amount, continue CPT and change her albuterol to as needed, switch from the high flow oxygen to the regular nasal cannula that we were using at home, discontinue the IV antibiotics since they ruled out viral or bacterial pneumonia, and continue the lasix to twice a day.
Friday morning the only change was to increase her lasix to three times a day due to an increase in haziness in her lungs from the x-ray taken that day. The doctor loved her improvement and stated that we will be making way to leaving tomorrow.
Saturday morning the doctors stated that Rochelle was doing great, all of the treatments and therapies worked tremendously and a LOT faster then they thought and they would discontinue the IV fluids, take out her NJ tube and place back her NG tube for feedings to resume at home, discontinue the PICC line and CPT and we will moved to the step down unit called IMC for one more night of monitoring before being able to go home.
Sunday morning we were told we were able to go home!!! Best news all week, Rochelle did amazingly all week with all of the changes she had to go through, and by the grace of God she stayed strong and came out stronger then ever!! We are going home with Lasix to be given twice a day in her NG tube, prevacid for her reflux to be given once a day, miralax to be given in the morning with her feeding and oxygen to remain the same at 1/4L on the oxygen concentrator.

Sorry for making this all about the facts, but Rochelle endured a LOT this past week and she is so amazing and strong. People say we (Shane and I) have amazing faith and strength, little do they know our baby girl Rochelle has gone through more than we can ever imagine. God gives her amazing strength and no one ever expected us to be here to this day being able to write about our little blessing. She is AMAZING, not us. We are so happy to be home with our girls and thankful for my mom able to be here with me and help me out with the girls while Shane went back to work this week after taking last week off.
**Thank you to everyone who helped make our girls have a wonderful Christmas, and took time to come visit in the hospital or bring gifts for the girls, we appreciate you all so much! :)