Mike and I always say he is such a little man - the things he does, his mannerisms - they are so little-manlike.  He'd been in the bathroom for a long time at this point so Mike when in to check on him and this is what he found.  When I opened the door to snap a quick picture - I snapped it at precisely the right moment (note the smile) because he was really upset with me and said "MOM!  I'm trying to poop!"

Fortunately for Finley, things started to slowly improve in the afternoon yesterday.  The results of her urinalysis came back positive for bacteria and white cells which are markers for a Urinary Tract Infection.  There is a third marker, nitrites, which weren't present, so they want to wait for the results of the culture to officially diagnose a UTI.  (As a side note - UTIs are one of the complications possible with surgery since she had a Foley catheter in her bladder for four days). Could it REALLY be that simple?  While we hope so, its really hard to get our hopes up.  And so we must wait, at least 72 hours until both the blood and urine cultures have gone their course.

The other little breakthrough we had at lunchtime was that Finley was indeed running a fever.  The nurses at the hospital always take axcillary temps (under the armpit) unless they get to a certain point - and then they take it rectally.  Finley's axcillary temp must not have been high enough to prompt the nurse to take her rectal temp overnight - though quite frankly, since she had such a high heart rate, it would have seemed to make sense - but when the nurse took it yesterday afternoon, she was indeed running a fever and it stood to reason that she likely had been running a fever since around 8 the night before when her heart rate started to spike.  So the nurse gave her some Tylenol and by the time I came back from lunch - her heart rate had gone from 175/180 down to the 150s and then it continued to drop all afternoon and had been hanging in the 130s at least through the time I called overnight.  Ideally her heart rate should be in the one-teens or one-twenties but this was a significant improvement.  This morning will be her third round of antibiotics and will mark a full 24 hour cycle so my hope is that whatever she has will start to really get knocked out.  The good news is that her surgical wound incision looks really good - amazing actually - so that wouldn't seem to be the source.  But trust me, there are plenty of other places that could have gotten infected - like one of her three IV lines, one of her three chest tubes, etc.  That is the tough thing about surgery like this - there are so many exposures because of all of the points of entry in to the body.  

And so we will spend another day in the PICU, trying to figure all of this out and praying that the worst is behind us.  Thanks for all of your prayers, thoughts and well wishes!!!!