The O'Neals: Some much needed R&R

After a looooong day yesterday, we are enjoying hotel life today. We were supposed to leave the hospital yesterday morning and have all day yesterday and today to relax, but it didn't quite work out that way. We didn't get to discharge until 5 in the evening (short staffed on drs) and then had to wait over an hour for a cab that was a minivan (all our stuff wouldnt fit in a car!). We finally got settled in our room and Sam went to sleep for the night around 8. I got to sleep in this morning and now Brian and Sam are napping. Not much planned for today, get some dinner later and have an early night. We have to be at the hospital at 6am. Tomorrow will be a very long day followed by a long, hard week I am sure. I am very thankful for this time we have now to rest and relax. We are expecting to have a lot of ups and downs for the first bit after this surgery. It is a huge surgery, and will take Sam's body a good while to adjust to all the changes. Things not only change day by day, but minute to minute in situatuions like this. We just have to rely on the fact that we are in the best children's hospital in the world and even better than that, this is all in God's hands! I will also try to post pics of Sam every day or so, although they will be graphic and hard to look at, it may help you all understand things better and you will eventually be able to see the progress. It is amazing how you can look at a pic of a child laying there with all that stuff and be able to say they look good that day. But if you get to look at him often, you will start to recognize the same things. Here are some recent pics :)