vacation, all I ever wanted

Come on, sing along with me. You know it's already in your head, so you might as well. OK, so it's not a real vacation, but Annika is going to get a Hospital Vacation. She came up to 6 west on Monday evening, and then lost both I.V.s in quick succession, which meant that she did a power-wean on the dilaudid. Today Plastic Surgery pulled her JP drain, and so she is now tube-less for the first time since mid-November. She's doing well off the dilaudid, and so the doctors are going to let her go to the Kohl's House for the weekend, just to get out of here for a few days. She still needs to have an upper scope to check out the state of her esophageal varices (her original problem, which seems almost forever ago by this time), so she'll come back early next week for that. If they are still there, even after her shunt surgery... Well, I just don't know. And it doesn't seem like any of the doctors know exactly, either. It seems like giving her a break right now is a good idea. Michelle over at the Kohl's House has offered to put back up the Christmas tree for her, and I think I'm going to take her up on the offer. With Frankie and Jörg and maybe even my parents on the scene, we could have a real blow-out party of a weekend. Today I bathed her and combed her hair and put her in the shiny, silky pajamas that my friend, Andrea, sent for her. She feels beautiful and so much closer to normal in non-hospital-issue clothes, you can just tell. We're going to go on a wheelchair ride around the floor (she can't hold her weight just yet), looking out windows and enjoying the feeling of open space.