Caili’s Coming Home!!

It's true ... Cailin is being discharged on Friday...this Friday!

Since our last post, things have just been going so well. Caili has continued to eat all of her feedings by mouth and gained weight in the process (it's been 2 weeks now). And, she has tolerated a lot of weaning of her oxygen support requirements. Actually, as of yesterday, (Tuesday) she would technically be ready to go home. But, the doctors want to give her until Friday to be safe and see if they can wean her oxygen support a bit further. Even if they can't wean her further, that won't prevent her from going home. Really, she just needs to pass the "car seat test" (sit in the car seat for an hour without respiratory distress) and continue to do as well as she has been and she can go home on Friday!

Caili will go home with several prescriptions, a monitor and oxygen. According to her pulmonologist, she may need the oxygen support for the next 4-6 months. But, we feel so fortunate to have only this minor inconvenience given all that she has been through. Tomorrow, we’ll have a large oxygen tank and lots of long tubing delivered to use while at home. And, they’ll provide us with several portable tanks for trips out of the house, like to the pediatrician's office or to walk Ellie!

I'm sure you can only imagine how elated Tim and I are to be finally taking Caili home. Of course, we're a bit nervous as well. But, we feel ready and excited to be at home, together as a family with Caili, Ellie and Kotie (our cat)! And, thankfully both my mom and Tim's mom are retired so we'll have some extra help for the first few weeks.

On a different note, Tim and I have been so touched by all of you who that have been following Caili's journey. On a weekly basis we would get calls or emails about our posts or requests to update the blog. It was also a weekly occurrence to learn of someone else who started reading the blog or added Caili to their prayers or even their church's prayer list. Friends, friends of friends, parents of a friend, co-workers of friends, etc. It's been amazing. Some of the stories we could tell would amaze you. While we can't see exactly who has been accessing her blog, we can see that it has been accessed by over 1,000 "unique visitors" from countries all around the world. We often get emails from people saying, "you may not remember me," or "we haven't met but...". Again, amazing and so very touching to us as well. We created the blog to keep our family and friends updated. But, we had no idea it would mean so much to us in return. Your comments and personal emails have really kept us going. And, we can't wait to tell Caili about it someday soon.

To help Caili know who was following her, we created (sorry...a little late) a guestbook. We were hoping each of you could sign it to say hello, explain how you’re connected to Caili or Tim and me, and post any thoughts or wishes you may have.

You can choose to post a public or private comment (there is a “private” checkbox”). But, we should mention that in order to prevent spammers from clogging up the guestbook we have to approve all posts, so your message may not show up for some time after you send it. The guestbook link can be found on the right menu, or, for those reading this via e-mail, you can view the guestbook here, and sign it here. Incidentally, we’ve also posted a new album of pictures, which you can see here.

And now, we need to get packing! Thank you again for all of your friendship, kindness and support. Your emails, comments, phone calls, acts of kindness and just knowing you cared helped us in more ways than words can describe.

Wish us luck and we’ll update you next FROM HOME!!