Saturday, January 9, 2010 9:30 AM, EST

Last night I spent the night in the PICU with Ally. The room is set up as follows: It is a large room with 3 patients, and in our case 2 nurses. There are pumps and alarms beeping ALL night. Everyone does their best to stay quiet, but it is almost impossible to sleep. The night before Daddy got about 2 hours sleep, last night I fared better with about 4 hours. The nurses Ally has had so far have been AWESOME! We are very pleased with the care she is getting.

Speaking of Ally: The doctors would really like to keep her breathing tube in until tomorrow. Ally has other ideas. She has been giving everyone trouble by not staying sedated. They have had to up her meds a few times now to keep her calm. (We like that she is fighting, but we really do need her to stay calm for now.) At one point last night the nurse found Ally had scooted herself halfway down the bed. The doctors and nurses are saying she is making baby steps forward. The only strange thing that is going on is that her body is making a lot of acid. They cannot find a reason for this and the plan is to wait it out for a bit. They do not seem super concerned about it, so we are not either.

Some details about surgery:
The surgeon said he removed everything he could see. There was active neuroblastoma in her. He was able to save her kidney (we were pretty sure that was a goner) and they were able to do radiation while she was still open. All good things.

Hopefully tomorrow I can write that Ally is breathing on her own. I sure would like to hear her little voice again.