A Picture That's Worth a Thousand Words

Anyone wondering if Gwendolyn has to stay in the hospital tonight after her MRI need only look at this picture:

Yep that's the sight (known to us as her contented "squinty smile" face) awaiting Mom and Dad as we were ushered into her recover room while she began to awaken from her anesthesia. Luckily, Gwen did a fabulous job of keeping her oxygen levels up during the scan. So, she never needed to be intubated with a breathing tube. As a result, she had a fairly uneventful time waking up after her MRI was complete. Shortly after getting called into her recovery room, we were officially given the green light to take Gwen home. Unfortunately, the MRI itself went on a little longer than we anticipated. However, that was only because they decided to take advantage of Gwen's outstanding vitals and get images from multiple angles that they initially didn't think they'd have time to capture. So, while we aren't staying the night at the hospital, we did spend the majority of the day there... Still, we're pretty happy with that trade off!

As for the results, we'll be waiting a little bit for those. Unfortunately, it will take a little bit of time for the necessary individuals to review the MRI images and render their opinion of Gwen's chiari malformation. But we hope to hear back once those deliberations are complete.

When we did finally get home, we collected Braelyn from Grandma McKee's and sat down for a celebratory pizza dinner as a family. As you can see above, even Braelyn got in the act as she grabbed a piece of crust and began gumming it (That's daddy's little girl).

All in all, it wasn't a bad Friday at all for the Castellanos! Undoubtely, your well wishes played a big role in today's good cheer. We can't thank you all enough yet again!!!

We'll keep you posted when we hear back on Gwen's MRI results. We hope you all have a great weekend!!!