Well, we are still at the hospital. I won’t take time to go into all of the details, but it was an exhausting day full of not great communication.

Kathryn woke up this morning, still determined that she was heading home today. But we couldn’t know for sure until we heard from her urology doctor, since he’s the main surgeon in this picture.

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

All day.

Kathryn went from this (smiling at everyone and telling them about going home, talking our ears off about seeing the other kids and having our homecoming party tonight) . . .

Overflowing with excitement all day and telling everyone she was going home

. . . to this by late afternoon when we still hadn’t heard anything. The stress of waiting and not hearing anything definite finally became too much for her emotionally.

Too much stress while waiting for answers

The kids at home were slowly falling apart, too, as they waited for word. And we got to practice patience in the midst of incredible frustration as hour after hour ticked by.

Finally at 7:30 tonight, our surgeon came to our room. He had been tied up all day with surgeries and meetings, but thought we had been told we were staying another night. We had a productive talk about communication breakdown and worked through the feelings resulting from that. It turns out that her wound culture did finally grow something. Three somethings, in fact. Two of them are the same as the bacteria causing her UTI, so they are pretty sure those positive results were just contamination from that. But the third was something different. They wanted to take one more night on IV antibiotics and take time to discuss whether she will need further treatment for that before sending us home.

So here we are. We were able to get Kathryn a fun snack left here by a friend earlier in the week, talk her through this decision, and promise her that we will do something fun with her tonight here at the hospital. She wanted a pizza party, so pizza party it is. She calmed down and accepted this unwanted news while eating her snack and waiting for her pizza to arrive from the hospital cafeteria.

And now, she has already moved on to being smiley and excited about going home tomorrow. Child-like faith. I want that. I need that.

We were also able to meet with the Wound Care Team this morning as we had hoped, and they gave us great products (they always carry magic around in their wound care bags) and clear instructions about how to help heal this very ugly wound that has now taken over the entire length of her incision. We feel good about this now.

Our urologist has promised us that, barring any emergencies, we will definitely be going home tomorrow. Scott called and talked with kids at home and encouraged them to pull together and hang on for one more night and that we would all be together tomorrow. They sounded good by the time he hung up with them.

So. We learned new lessons today about being willing to be used where we are placed and about waiting on God’s timing.

And Kathryn taught us how to adjust joyfully in the midst of disappointment.

I want to close with this picture that I forgot to post yesterday. I love this photo. If you were following our blog a year ago, you might remember the post about Maggie and Murphy. Well, the gift shop now sells a GIGANTIC Maggie and Murphy! Kathryn held them for the photo only. They are not coming home with us.

Pretty cute, though. Right?