FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2008 09:02 PM, EDT
The rest of the story...

I have some time (as the little peanut went to bed about an hour ago), so I thought I would let you all know what happened yesterday. It was an interesting day. (This is a long post, with some funny parts!)

First, we did end up going down the night before....a whole other story about getting lost and driving around Boston for 35 minutes, we did find the hotel. We had printed off walking directions from the hotel to the hospital (I am not sure if I mentioned before, we stayed at the holiday inn, because the Ronald McDonald house is under construction), but when we got there the lady at the front desk gave us the shuttle schedule. Good, now if it was bad weather we could get a ride.

Next morning (after a night of Ally refusing to sleep in the crib that was finally provided to her around 9:40, going to bed around 11:00 and sleeping sideways between her Daddy and me with her tiny baby hand often waking us up because it was in our mouth) we go down for the 8:00 shuttle, only to find it was a 7:45 shuttle. The next shuttle would get us there on time, but not allow us to stop for breakfast. So, we walked. It turned out to be a very nice walk. And we had time for breakfast....love McDonald's Ice Coffee!

9:00, our first appointment at Dana Farber. We were assuming she would get blood taken and we would be headed over to Boston Children's by 10:00. About 11:40ish we are FINALLY escorted over to Boston Children's (and after them taking 4 tubes of blood from Ally).

We get her set up in a bed with mommy holding her and then they hook her up to the crazy machine in the pictures. They primed the machine with blood for her, because they were taking 240mls of blood, because she is so little, they needed to give her fluids back. They also gave her saline. So, she gets hooked up a around 12:30 and then we wait. She took about an hour nap on mommy and was generally quite good for the 4+ hours she had to stay in that bed. Mommy hopped out of the bed and daddy got in when mommy's legs were asleep. Towards the end of the process the doctor running the show tells us they are moving to a different room and floor over the night, and we will need to go to a new place the following day if we need to come back. (Great....I already mentioned about driving around the night before correct? Directions are not our strong suit.) It was finally decided that they would not give us directions, but we should just go back to the same place and someone would walk us to the new place.

Ally is such a charmer that the doctor that was with us all day was sad she had the next day off, because she would not get to see Ally again! It is impossible NOT to love this girl!

So, around 5:00 we leave the hospital and because it is still a nice day and light outside we walk back to the hotel. Yes, Ally is very underweight for her age (weighing in at about 16 pounds), but carrying 16 pounds of squirmy baby who had been asked to stay still for close to 5 hours as well as the super large amount of food, toys and diapers she requires for about a mile is hard. (Thanks for sticking with that super long sentence...I hope me teaching friends will forgive me!)

We get back to the hotel and meet up with our wicked awesome friend Matt who brought us dinner! And then hang out until we get "the call" (which was supposed to come in around 7:00). The doc gave us her cell phone # and said to call her if she had not called us by 9:00. 9:00, and we call her. At this point she tells me Ally has reached 21 (twice her goal of 10), but that the doc who needs to sign off on this is no where to be found and not answering pages. She says she will call back by 9:30. 9:32 we get another call. Still can't find this other doc, so we need to stay put and they will call us in the morning.

The next morning (after Ally decides the hotel crib is not really that bad). 8:00 we call the cell again, still can't find the doc....we were supposed to be there for 8:30 if she needed to go back. We should not head in, but wait for a call. 9:00, the call really comes and we are allowed to leave the city and drive North into a snowstorm that is putting Concord into the history books as the snowiest winter in recorded history! Yeah for the 2 hour drive.

So that is our tale. Thanks for sticking with it!