Haven is remaining steady through this crucial time in her recovery from yesterday’s procedures.  As is normal with such surgeries, she has been getting lots of fluids in her body, but her body has not been able to keep up with getting rid of those fluids.  So, she is getting a bit more puffy again.  Don’t worry, she’s not nearly as puffy as she was in December while she was on ECMO, but she is puffy.  It will be several days before her body will be able to catch up and start to move the fluid out.  She still is on a good dose of pain medication, but she has opened her eyes a couple of times as the sedation has been wearing off.  

Haven did have an interesting visitor today.  One of the workers here came to us and said there was someone visiting the hospital today and would like to meet a couple of families of kids in the ICU.  She apparently thought it would be nice if he could meet the three of us, so she brought him by.  The gentleman arrived with a small entourage of people (all dressed in business formalwear) including photographers.  He came into our room and chatted with us about Haven and her experiences here.  We shared a little with him about Haven’s condition and everything she has gone through.  He expressed his kind regards, then gave us a book and a large manila envelope.  He told us that the book was written by his department and that the envelope contained an autographed picture of Barney and some other pictures as well.

It took us a couple of minutes after he left to put together who this gentleman was.  As it turns out, the gentleman was Sandy K. Baruah, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development for the United States of America.  (Impressive title, isn’t it?).  The book he gave us was entitled, “Teacher In The Air” and is about Hurricane Hunters.  Apparently, our country pays people to fly special airplanes into hurricanes so we can know more about them.  (Strangely enough, the U.S. Department of Commerce is in charge of this hurricane research).  The book we got tells us about these hurricane hunters.  After looking at the large manila envelope that accompanied the book, we saw that the top corner had printed on it:  The White House, Washington, D.C.  We opened it and found a number of post-card-sized photographs.  Haven is now the proud owner of pictures of President Bush, the First Lady, Vice-President Cheney, his wife (can’t remember her name), and an autographed picture of Barney:  the President’s scottish terrier.