Good news finally!

Well, after 17 long days we have finally taken Adam home for what we hope will be the last time in this most recent round of hospitalisations. He is over his infection, done with wheezing and nebulisers, has been to school two days in a row now, and is to all outward appearances our happy, healthy little Adam again.

The reason I hope this will be the last time is that I jumped the gun a little bit and took Adam home before the doctors were fully convinced that he's medically safe, before they were quite ready to send him home. That is because Adam has still been requiring oxygen at nights to keep his oxygen saturations in the blood up to a normal level. It's been like this for a week now, with him well during the day and still needing a trickle of oxygen at night. But last night the trend was clearly up--by morning, when he was still deeply asleep, his numbers were at 88% instead of 80%. That, my friends, is good enough for us.

We don't make these decisions lightly, but we have had to make them many times in Adam's short life. Always it's a mixture of trend, how Adam is in himself, where we are physically and mentally and what the family needs. While we readily admit that Adam's safety is of utmost importance, so too is letting the family be together for dinner and breakfast! For many boring and detailed reasons I think this is genuinely a trend upwards for him and not some underlying problem, and we believe he is safe. But they did send me home with a monitor just to check, and strict instructions to come back if they are too low!

And, as I remind myself regularly when I feel badly for disappointing a doctor, Adam is alive because I disagreed with a doctor on day 4 of his life, so sometimes sticking to your instincts is a good thing.