The Saturday morning 6am call to the hospital tells us SJ has hung on through the night on her cpap, or I think they’re now calling it bpap…which is a sort of pimped up version of cpap with just a bit more suport being given,  which is good news.

So into the hospital we go and what a difference a couple of hours makes as we walk in to see the now all too familiar site of lots of red flashing alarms on Savannah’s bank of monitors, accompanied by the usual cacophony of beeps, bleeps and alarms. She’s in the midst of a little bout of apnea, which is her third in a row and this time she needs a quick blast under the oxygen mask to get her back in the breathing game.  Doctors are paged and the decisions taken to prepare her kit to be re-ventilated as she’s working just too hard to do the breathing all on her tod.  She’s had a good stab at it again and smashed her last effort of under an hour on the bpap but not managed to set a new pb as her very first go on it lasted a good three days.

Then, in a last minute reprieve, almost as if she knew what was about to happen to her, SJ pulls it out of the bag with a good score on her blood gases and quickly settles down into a trouble free rythem of breathing.  Seems someone has thought better of the idea of having a ventilator tube stuffed down her throat and a feeding tube up her nose and decided to knuckle down and focus on her breathing!

There’s no doubt that Savannah had overheard everyone saying she’s seconds away from being intubated and she spends the day breathing like a little trooper. Her oxygen levels keep desaturating from time to time but it’s nothing a little poke doesn’t fix and she’s decided to park the apnea for the timebeing at least.  By 7pm she’s managed to hang on in there on a knife edge for the entire day and  put in a full 48 hours off the ventilator.  The consultant pops round for a quick check and tells us that there’s still an 80% chance of her going back on the ventilator at any second but it’s worth keeping everything crossed and holding out as long as possible in the hope that the 20% chance of success comes in.  And even if she doesn’t stay off it, the longer they can delay putting her back on it, the better as every breath in the ventilator can scar her little lungs and do them damage. Everything is remaining firmly crossed and we’re, at least, fully prepared for the ventilator to likely be making a reappearance at some stage so at least our expectations are being managed and we’re prepared for what lies ahead this time.

In other news today,  Roz’s amazing ability to not be able to go anywhere in London without bumping into someone she knows, holds true as sure enough we bump into someone she knows at the hospital!

And so we head home for the day and back to cuddles and endless tail wags from aunty Gaujai who is still enjoying being top dog and is blissfully unaware of the family’s new arrival, who’s poised to steal her crown the moment she comes home.

And for all the dog lovers out there..here’s SJ’s aunty posing for the camera and keeping mum warm!