Archive for February, 2007

Ramona is having trouble maintaining her saturation tonight. She is in the high 60’s to low 70’s and they are trying to figure out why. We’re trying to go with the flow, but we are both here at the hospital and are very scared that this might be a serious set-back.

I’ve been commended many times this past week for trusting my instincts and taking Ramona for a second opinion. It’s so clear now that that was the right thing to do. Well I have a confession to make. At the time I wasn’t so sure if I was doing it for the right reasons. (more…)

Just wanted to draw your attention to a new way to help Jane and Andy these days: “grocery runs”:http://ramonamae.com/help-needed-grocery-runs/. Thanks for all the ways you have been providing for the “Fabulous Four”:http://ramonamae.com/2007/on-togetherness/!

I was talking to the nurse-practitioner today about Ramona’s tenuous long-term prognosis. Trying to get concrete answers from her is like squeezing blood from a stone. And it doesn’t help that I assign special meaning to every time she raises her eyebrows, looks over my shoulder or checks her clipboard. I mean geez, she might of just had a bad piece of fish or something.
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Just a little heads-up here: Our hosting provider will be taking their whole operation down for about three hours starting at 1:15 AM CT on Sunday, February 25, for emergency electrical repairs. If you try to visit RamonaMae.com then, you’ll get a whole lot of nothing — but please come back Sunday morning and we trust everything will be back to normal.

We’ve had a lot of glimpses of the old Ramona.
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I called Ramona’s room this morning to check in on the superstar. The Mom who answered was clearly not Jane. When I got a hold of Jane I found out why. Rock Star Ramona is doing so well that she has been cleared to move to the cardiac floor. (more…)

This is what a whack job grief makes you. When Andy and I lost our first pregnancy I remember thinking, “If I hadn’t been so concerned about the pregnancy and gone to the doctor so early, if I’d have demonstrated a little faith, this wouldn’t have happened”. And today, while holding our little Ramona I thought, “I bet she was fine before. If I hadn’t taken her to the doctor so many times, if I hadn’t scheduled that echo-cardiogram, they wouldn’t have found this problem and her heart would have been fine. God is trying to teach me something about worrying.”
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Many thanks to those of you who have volunteered to sit up with Ramona overnight! Your love for Ramona and family has been so encouraging. Unfortunately, the hospital is now informing us that only parents can stay with Ramona overnight, so we need to scrap our earlier plan. Thanks, though!

Our little Mona Mae is a wonder. I remember the first time the doctors did rounds the morning after her surgery. They spoke in hushed tones, they were serious, they were soothing. This morning they just marched right in and started teasing each other and the nurse, making comments about Ramona’s progress like “awesome!”, “fantastic!” and “amazing!”. (more…)