Two more days

I talked to Dr. Rouse yesterday and he is so pleased with Gabe's progress. We settled on Thursday as a target release date. Can you believe it? He is getting his sleep study right now. I was going to take this opportunity to do laundry and pack back at the RMH, but is pouring down rain. So I am blogging and updating pictures instead. I am also working on a little something to leave for everyone here to remember us by. Some of them check the blog, so I can't reveal that just yet. It hit me yesterday that we are really leaving, and then I got that little sad twinge when I started to think about some of the weekend nurses that I didn't get to say goodbye to. We'll be back, but you never know who will be working when you come back. We'll also have to try to come for a visit at shift change so we can see day shift and night shift. I was talking to Amanda this morning, when I got her picture with Gabe's feet. She mentioned the sad part of nights is that they rarely see the babies that come back to visit. She also told me that the nurses were talking about Gabe last night and reflecting on how far he has come. Her words were very touching. She called him a miracle and followed that with "it is not that often we actually get to see the hand of God so literally at work". Something like that. She mentioned that Dr. Little (we miss him, I think they do too) was the most optimistic. Kathryn said several of the nurses questioned Gabe going on ECMO (remember how bleak it was that first night. If he really had no chance, as they had been told, it would have been cruel). Dr. Little told them he thought Gabe would be ok. I never knew he felt so optimistic that early on. As doctors, they have such a responsibility to tell you how things are. I know they want to give hope, but they can't give false hope. That would be far more cruel. There's no doubt we needed to know what we were up against. It sounds like maybe he was one of the first to really have faith in Gabe and his will to live.

I added some more pictures - so enjoy!