Life as a Leach

Enjoy this little interview with Abby! What is your full name?  Abigail Elizabeth Joy Leach What does your name mean?   They all mean Joy except Leach What are your favorite toys?   Playmobile, Barbies, stuffed animals, and dolls What is your favorite color?   PURPLE!!!! What do you want to be when you grow up?   A veterinarian for baby red pandas and a horse rider trainer and a veterinarian for dogs and cats and bunnies and pigs What do you like to do when you have free time?   I like to play with my Playmobile characters, play with my brother with Legos, and I like to sing and dance, and I like watching my brother singing a song in his play. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?  Australia because I want to visit the beach and the koalas Who are some of your favorite people?  My mom, dad, Caleb, Chloe, grandparents, cousins, my aunt and uncle, and Mrs. Danielson If you could meet a famous person, who woul...

Thank you for all of the purple pictures and well wishes!  Abby made it through her MRI and we are on our way home now.  The mri took 2 hours.  The first hour was great.  She took a break, went to the bathroom, and then the second half was rough.  It probably would have been better if she had just plowed through and not taken a break, honestly.  Her back was really hurting and she cried the last half an hour. 😢. But she finished!! Here are some pictures from last night and today:  A visit to Carlo’s Bakery  The Stage Door Tour at Radio City Music Hall meeting a Rockette visiting the AG store having fun at a Valentine’s Day party at the hospital I totally forgot to take a picture, but we also finally got to meet another VEPTR mom friend who lives in NYC!  She is the sweetest and brought Abby a big basket of treats, which made her day! We are grateful for your prayers and grateful to be going home!

We drove up to NYC today, dropped off mountains of Abby’s medical records at the Spine Hospital, and then headed to CHONY.  We scheduled a tour of the hospital with child life to learn about the hospital and help Abby to feel more comfortable.  She was worried about CHONY being different than CHOP, but is feeling much better now! The hospital has playrooms and we have access to all of them—not just the one on our floor!  There’s foosball and air hockey too, so she was excited about that.  She will have her own room, which also has a mini fridge in it.  That is very exciting for me!!  The rooms are pretty much what we are used to, so everything looked more familiar than she thought it would be.  The cafe on the first floor is pretty tiny, but I think Door Dash will work fine.  There’s a Valentine’s Party tomorrow on the main floor that we should be able to go to for a little while.  They have lots of special events, and just this week an actin...

Tomorrow, we will head to New York to CHONY.  We have a tour of the hospital scheduled in the afternoon and need to hand over the MASSIVE amounts of medical history CHONY needs from CHOP!  On Friday, Abby has a CT scan and an MRI.   Until today, we thought Abby would be doing the MRI under anesthesia.  During my pre-op phone call with the nurse, they didn’t like that Abby had recently been on an antibiotic for lung issues.  She wasn’t sick—it’s just the way her lungs our.  Our pulmonologist said she was fine for the MRI, but CHONY didn’t want to risk it.  To avoid the nightmare it would be to attempt to reschedule, Abby will be doing this MRI awake.   She did it awake once before out of necessity (long story, but she couldn’t be intubated).  It was NOT pleasant, but she did it.  Please pray that all goes well.  We have music and I’m going to read aloud to her. We are also hoping Child Life will have some tricks.  If she can’t d...