a new year, another therapy

we haven't had the best beginning to the new year. in fact, it's been downright awful, but starting to look up. coming back from Christmas vacation Adam started to feel a bit under the weather. this was scary because some family members had been sick at Christmas and we were scared to death of getting Emmy sick. so when Adam started showing signs, we prayed Emmy (and I) had evaded it. but Saturday morning, I woke up with a sore throat and knew it was coming on strong. and if I was getting it, I knew it would be a miracle for Emmy not to.

we had our lovely nurse Vanessa on Saturday, which isn't usually the case, but she was making up some hours since we had been gone for a week. she was closely monitoring Emmy's breathing, feeding and temperature. she seemed to be a bit crankier than normal and also seemed to be more congested.

by about noon, her breathing was getting more labored and the monitor that tells us how much oxygen she is getting was showing she was not getting enough. so we started giving her some supplemental oxygen. (we have only had the pulse-ox monitor and oxygen at home for a few weeks, but it came in handy!)

just a few hours later, she started spiking a fever. but we were managing everything ok with our mini home hospital. . .until all of a sudden, we weren't. it took only minutes for Emmy to go from good to bad. . .she couldn't get a breath and her oxygen saturation number continued to decrease even as we increased the oxygen she was getting. she started to go limp, stop crying and losing color. so we jumped into the car and drove as fast as possible to the nearest hospital. . .with no carseat and me banging on her back all the way trying to get her to breathe. thankfully, within minutes they had a team of doctors working on her and breathing life back into her.

and there we stayed to ring in the New Year and several subsequent days. we were released yesterday and are so happy to be home. she is still requiring oxygen supplementation, breathing treatments every four hours around the clock and some extra meds, but home is so much better. it's such a shame that a silly little cold can land our sweet girl a week in the hospital!

before that trip to the hospital, we started a brand new therapy (to us) that we are really excited about. it's called Cuevas Medek Exercise (CME) and Emmy will be doing sessions once a week. . .or twice a week if we can find the time and the funds! it's supposed to really help build trunk and neck strength to get Emmy closer to being able to hold her head up, sit up, etc. here are a few videos from her first session that was really more of an evaluation. we can't wait until we can go again!