UPDATE: We are now home and Gwendolyn is doing well. She's still tired and we are still keeping a close eye on her, but she's rehydrated and glad to be in her own bed.
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Don't panic, but we're in the hospital. It looks like Gwendolyn has the stomach flu. We didn't blog much last week because Victoria and I were really sick with what we thought was food poisoning (a Happy Anniversary gift from some oysters… or so we thought). Fortunately, the worst of it was a 24-hour thing because a) we were at a hotel in San Francisco and needed to get home (we actually had to extend our stay in SF to get better before driving), b) it was nasty, awful, yuck, and c) we are hoping this means it will also pass quickly for G.
Saturday she woke up a bit off — lethargic, not quite herself, but normal breathing, etc. But Sunday we could tell she was sick and she told us her tummy hurt and throughout the day she had several looser than usual diapers. She then started breathing rapidly and making strange sounds, which made us start getting really worried — but then she'd look okay again and her oxygen saturation and heartrate were normal the whole time. We talked to some other SMA parents who gave some great help and we gave her Pedialyte (Gatorade for kids) at home to replenish her electrolytes. But then Gwendolyn had a sudden crash — while on bipap and we haven't seen that since her lung collapsed three years ago. She stabilized but not because of anything we did — she just came back up. We called her doctors who sent us to the ER right away. They were most worried about dehydration and things getting worse… very fast.
So the short story is we are now in the PICU. Gwendolyn is looking much better after some help getting hydrated and a good night of rest. And we are pretty sure we will be going home later today.
On the plus side — we got to see our fabulous PICU nurses and RT friends who all came by to say hi, give us hugs, and see how huge Gwendolyn is now 
. And our experience through the ER and PICU has been incredible. It's been over three years since Gwendolyn has been hospitalized — knocking on wood — but the bear hug we've received during our stay reminds us how fortunate we are to live in such a compassionate community.
