So this morning Ava got her picc line re-wired and now has a double lumen picc! We are all quite pleased. And I realized today that Ava is pretty smart. This morning a member of the transport team came to get Ava to bring her to IGT – Image Guided Therapy – and Ava was not pleased about being taking somewhere. She was upset, but it wasn’t just that, she was just acting in a way that made me sure that she knew that we were taking her somewhere and that uncomfortable things happen to her when we do that. 
She didn’t want to calm down when we got there and because she just need a local anaesthetic for the picc swap, we gave her some oral morphine just to make her comfortable and calm for the procedure, and it worked. She soon became quite calm and sleepy. They wheeled her away and I had to go wait in the waiting room, but our nurse that stayed with Ava said that she would open her eyes and give the doctors the stink eye once in a while during the procedure, just to let them know she was on to them. :)
And then on the way back up to her room she was fine. She was looking all around and I really do think that she knew that it was over and she was going back to her room, call me crazy but I know Ava and I think she knew what was going on.
And they said the procedure went smoothly. Ok, so I was in the waiting room, waiting for Ava to be done when the Dr came in and asked me to come with him. I got up and followed him and he shows me into an office and says “We can talk in here”…. and for a split second my heart stopped beating and I held my breath because in that moment I thought it might be bad news. But before he could close the door behind us he said, “She’s fine!” Oh phew!!! I think he must have seen the look on my face, so he explained that they don’t like to say anything in front of other parents, even good news. I was just happy to hear that all went well.
So other than that it was an OK day. The morphine made Ava sleepy so she slept till about 4:00 pm when we woke her up to weigh her. She was alert so I fed her a little bit of pears and she had a few sips of milk. I was laughing at her – in a good way of course – but she was quite fluid over-loaded today and looked rather puffy and cute – her eyes were just little slits and her face was quite round, oh Ava. They had held one of her diuretics yesterday as it was making her mineral levels wonky, but thankfully with the double picc now, they can consider giving her lasix constantly, which will probably be a good thing and hopefully she can drop the extra fluid soon.
So all in all it was a good day. And really, the bigger hope here is that the old picc was perhaps harbouring infection that we could never really see – and with that gone maybe Ava won’t get any more fevers and then with the constant supply of lasix, she can become more stable and plateau in a good place while she continues to wait for a heart.
And I have to say that God is changing my heart in this wait. For a while I was just thinking that God was going to take her, as a transplant just seemed so impossible. But lately, I really find my faith growing and as I told my dad the other day, I am started to believe, really truly that God can heal Ava and will bring her a heart. It goes against my human reasoning, and I still feel the need to prepare for if she goes… but it’s just something that I can’t explain. I started reading Beth Moore’s book ‘Believing God” and she wrote something simple and profound that really spoke to me…
‘The God we serve is able (Dan 3:17). Everything is possible (Mark 9:23). Nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37). We can always hope and pray diligently for a miracle. If, in God’s sovereignty, He chooses to accomplish His purposes another way, let it not be that we have not because we asked not (James 4:2) or that we have not because we believed not (Matt. 9:29).
This is exactly what our Pastor Leo told us before Ava was born. It’s OK to pray for a miracle… we can because God can! I just needed reminding.
So we are begging God to intervene with a miracle – a new heart – that would save Ava’s life and I know He can! He can!
But if He chooses not too, it won’t be because we didn’t ask, or because we didn’t believe.
We believe.
Amen.
