We are woken up very unhappily at 7:15 am by a lab tech who is here for more of Rose's blood. I notice that Chuck is back from home, he steps up to help hold her so we don't call a nurse. This tech gets it right on the first try. Fantastic. Rose has even managed to produce enough blood to fill the required vials.
A few minutes later, our pediatrician walks in, he has spoken with the Infectious Disease Doctor and read some of the notes from the GI doctor (apparently even doctors have problems reading other doctors' writing!) I ask him about us going home, he says that if Rose keeps eating and goes potty he would have no problem with that. He also seems to fall into the hepatitis A group at this point.
I order Rose some breakfast after he leaves, and she eats two scrambled eggs, half my bagel, but won't touch her muffin, hashbrowns, or pears that I ordered, so I order her two more eggs, which she eats quickly. I have no doubt in my mind that she would have eaten two more had I asked for them, but we thought it would be better for her to take a little break.
Dillon calls and asks to speak with Rose, and she gets the biggest smile when he's talking to her. I'm pretty sure she says "I love you" to him, which we haven't heard her say before. He tells us they'll come later in the afternoon and bring us some Qdoba for lunch.
We hang out and color and play for a while and the ID doctor comes back. He says, "Hey." I say, "Hey". Chuck says "Hey." Rose says "Hey!" Everyone laughs. The ID doctor says, "I guess you guys have heard the good news." And we say, "um, what good news?" And he tells us that the levels they've been so concerned about have gone from being 100x too high to only about 50x too high. Everything else is pretty much back to normal. He thinks we can go home, but we need our Resident and Pediatrician to agree. Since the Hepatitis A labs take 7-10 days to come back, we'll be able to wait at home and just go in for follow up with the pediatrician. If that comes back negative they'll probably want to do some more tests, including for the liver flukes, but that would have to go to the CDC in Atlanta, and so would take even more time. But as long as Rose is stable we can pretty much leave- or at least, that's his opinion.
It turns out that's the Resident's opinion as well, and its shared by our pediatrician, so we just wait for them to get all the paperwork and everything together. Dillon and Grandma Vickie and Grandpa Tim come with lunch just as our nurse comes in and asks if we are ready to go home. We are, but we stay and eat. Dillon brings Rose a toy cell phone, which she LOVES. He knows his sister too well already. She's been playing with a paper cell phone from a piece of junk mail for two weeks now, walking around the house with it, saying, "Hello?" and a variety of other things…
We bring Dillon and Rose home, the dogs are quite happy to see us. Rose falls asleep in the car (as do I) and manages to stay pretty much asleep while we bring her into the house. I call Kate's and leave a message that she doesn't have to come back today to let the dogs out (but she doesn't get the message and comes back a few hours later). It's great to be home again, although less great as the house was a disaster from four days of Rose being sick and then three days of us being in the hospital with brief intermissions of Chuck running in, throwing things around looking for stuff, and then leaving. I had to run the dishwasher half-empty as it smelled terrible from three day old cereal bowls and stuff.
But I clean up a bit while Rose sleeps and Dillon and Chuck play Uno, then I help D get ready for a birthday party he's going to for an older kid. It's a soccer theme, so he puts on the super-cool Mexico team outfit Rachel and Patrick brought back for him from their recent trip. He makes up a little chant, singing "I know soccer and the Astros ROCK" around the house (kinda quietly as to not wake his sister).
Eventually we have to wake her and take Dillon to the party, where they've closed the block and are playing soccer in the street. Rose gets right in the mix of it, following her brother and trying to get the ball. She is very upset a few minutes later when we have to leave, and cries as if her heart will break when we leave Dillon. He's spending the night, too, so she'll miss him tonight, but Dillon had already planned on attending the party and it didn't seem fair to make him leave early.
So we take her home and make it an early night, for the most part. I think everyone just really needed some sleep!