Lots of sleeping, crazy rashes, fevers and doctors appointments...

I've been trying to keep everyone updated on Grace. Really, I have.  I've received lots of calls and texts asking how she is. I know I'm doing a poor job at updating. Thank you for continuing to care about her. It has been a long week at our house. There has been a lot of this....

 and this...

 and more of this...going on at our house.

Not only by Grace, but myself. We have spent a lot of time in my bed together sleeping. I wasn't going to share about me. I don't need pity or meals or "Poor Andees" or anything of the sort, just people to laugh with me. By Monday afternoon I was still wearing the same thing I came home from the hospital in. EVERYONE in my house bathes EVERY DAY. This is just how we do things, so me still having the same clothes on from Saturday should have been a sign something was wrong. I wasn't quite sure why I was so tired. I figured it all had caught up with me and I finally broke. I couldn't keep my eyes open, my body hurt, I had a low grade fever and I felt like I had been kicked in the chest. We kept trying to get out of the house, both of us. Monday my mom came and got us all up, showered and fed. Jeff has taken us for walks and sat us out in the front yard to enjoy the nice weather.  We've tried to be upright. Grace is doing great! She is doing wonderful with her walks, and meds and O2 levels. I think if I let her, she would probably run. She likes the tank on wheels, that way she can pull it herself and control our pace.

We have been dealing with a yucky rash and fever. The rash started on Thursday before we came home. The nurses guaranteed me that it would be gone once we got her home and cleaned up. We did what they told us and the rash continued to spread. It covered her neck and up her ear. She didn't itch and it didn't seem to bug her. I had my brother-in-law, who is an IHC physician, look at it. He gave us a steroid cream to put on it. A couple days later it hadn't touched it and it had still continued to spread all over her whole trunk. The steroid needed time to work, we didn't have time to wait for it.  We really needed to know what was causing it. The surgeon's nurse practitioner called to check in on her and I told her the rash had spread. I wasn't worried until she told me she was worried. She asked me to have her seen again.

Luckily, Wednesday morning I was able to get both Grace and myself in to our doctors on cancelled appointments. Gracelyn's doctor wasn't happy about the rash either and wasn't sure what it was. He made us an appointment for Thursday with a dermatologist in the hospital.  I ran straight to my appointment to find out that I have a strange case of mastitis. She didn't feel it was a straight forward case. I don't even know how to be sick. It's been years since I've taken anything. Moms don't have time to be sick.  I have a seven month old that I am nursing. I've nursed all my children to one year and didn't want to have to quit nursing her because of the surgery. I brought my pump with to the hospital, but didn't do a great job at doing what I was supposed to. It was too hard to leave Gracelyn to do it. My parents would bring our baby down often so I could feed her. I was afraid I would lose my milk or she would want to stop nursing after being bottle fed.  They prescribed me some meds and asked me to report back in a week. The diagnosis made sense why I was feeling so crappy. Jeff picked up my prescription and I took it around 6:30. By 9:30 I was covered from head to toe in hives. I had a reaction to the drug. I left my house to find a nurse friend, when my doctor brother-in-law passed by me driving. I flagged them down and he told me what I needed to do. Those in my neighborhood may have heard me laughing about the situation, I laughed so hard. Not sure what else to do at this point. Like I said, I don't need pity. Just laugh with me. It's kind of funny. We got me on a new med yesterday. I feel 100 times better today. That's the end of my sad story (now you know why we disappeared), back to Grace. 

We saw the dermatologist yesterday and she is convinced that it is a reaction to whatever was used to clean her before surgery. She feels like the lines are too defined. The dermatologist wants us to try keep trying the same steroid cream my brother-in-law gave us for two weeks and pray it goes away. Yesterday I noticed that the rash is starting to change color where it first started. I hope that's a good sign. Her fever also broke yesterday....Finally!

So, aside from a lot of sleeping, crazy rashes, fevers and doctors appointments, we have been doing fantastic. :)  Monday morning and today Grace was able to FaceTime with her class. She's has a lot of fun seeing her friends. She was given permission to go to her class program next Friday and she needed to start practicing her songs and parts. She has the best teacher!

This is my favorite picture from this week. I took this Monday at 3:00. After I took it I realized we were exactly one week to the hour of when she left the operating room. She looks fantastic. She loved getting her hair washed and curled. She's a tough girl!