Olivia is Home!!

Just to review since I last blogged:

Olivia's diagnoses: SKULL fracture (I just noticed I had typed brain- oy) and a subdural hematoma (small bleed). This is on the right side of her head, in the area above her ear.

Olivia had the intubation tube removed early Tuesday morning (Kurt had to put up a fight to get them to do it).

Tuesday morning she had x-rays to make sure her neck was okay, they did some clinical tests to check her back, everything was okay, and they removed the neck brace.

Early afternoon she was moved out of ICU to the trauma floor. They took her off her IV, gave her Tylenol for her headache, and by late afternoon she was sitting up, drinking, eating whatever she wanted (Cheetos, ice cream, and chocolate chip cookies), and happily watching her favorite movies.

Early Wednesday morning they took out the IV lead they weren't using (she had one in each arm).

One thing about hospitals that has always driven me crazy is once you get to sleep, or in this case once Olivia would get to sleep, someone would come in to bug her. By this morning when doctors started showing up she just put her blanket over her head or averted her eyes and ignored them whenever they tried to talk to her. It also didn't help that she had a headache again this morning, with a little dizziness and nausea.

We did a follow-up CT scan around 8:30, talked the results over with a doctor by 10:30 (improvement and stable), and they had us out the door around noon. Traveling home was a little tricky- she gets car sick anyways, but she waited until she was home before she threw up. She is likely to have headaches with some dizziness and nausea for the next few days. For the next 6 weeks we are supposed to only let her walk and do walking-paced activities. I see how this is possible for a week or so, but once she is feeling better I don't know how we'll be able to limit her -- she is a 2 year old who thought she could climb out of a shopping cart by herself and has been doing wild things like jumping off the kitchen counter.

Soooo, in a couple weeks we go back for some follow-up stuff- an MRI and follow-ups for that. It has been a crazy week.