I left the hospital around 5PM last night and Erika stayed with Mira. Word from Erika is that Mira mostly slept and stayed in bed. She didn’t do much of anything, other than sleep and be generally grumpy.

It was an uneventful night, which is a very good thing considering the last few nights. Erika offerred Mira all kinds of her favorite foods for breakfast: cereal, bananas, grapes, you name it. Mira wouldn’t eat anything. “No thank you,” was all that she would say.

Erika tells me that she’s tried to get Mira to at least get up for a walk, but Mira isn’t really interested in getting out of the bed. Since she has the flu, Mira isn’t really allowed to go into the toy room and play with the toys (she’ll contaminate them). So, they are stuck in the room to stare at the TV. Luckily, Erika has the macbook and can get email and surf the web. But we are all pushing for Mira to start eating.

Lunchtime update: Mira ate some pretzels around lunch and promptly threw up 4 minutes later. Very unsettling. Erika is still working on getting her to go for walks to work up an appetite. But if she keeps throwing everything up, that doesn’t help. Most of the day has been spent sleeping. Here’s a pic of Mira sleeping this morning with her leg hanging off the bed:

Mira sleeping with her leg off the bed

Afternoon update: I’m at the hospital now, I found Mira and Erika walking around the hallways. They have just moved Mira off of neurosurgery care and onto a normal pediatrician, so that they can be a bit more aggressive with her diet. Mira has eaten a few bites of sliced turkey since I arrived and nothing has come back up yet. She is still in bed and is watching rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

Grandma also just arrived and she is going to stay with Mira tonight and tomorrow  while Erika is working downstairs at the Ireland Cancer Center. Here is a pic of the the three of them:

Grandma Cheryl, Erika and Mira

Our new pediatrician is moving Mira off her IV fluids soon and he is hopeful that we can get Mira eating more tonight and drinking. If so, he’s making it his goal for Erika to take Mira home with her tomorrow. Apparently it’s very common that kids will get here and catch some sort of bug that causes this type of reaction. The concern is that Mira is just so weak from the surgery that she can’t stay sick too long.

She’s just eaten and drank more in the last 30 minutes than she has all day. We’ll post another update this afternoon before she goes to bed on how she has progressed.

Thanks so much for all your wonderful notes. It’s really helpful for us.

PS Mira likes to put her toys in “time out” We call it her way of adding some control into a pretty chaotic life. Here is a pic of her dolls sitting in “time out” at the foot of her bed:

Toys in a time out