This year I am riding for Arly. On December 21st Arly's parents were told that their 1-month-old daughter needed to be admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) as she was struggling to breath from RSV. Progressively Arly started getting worse and on December 23rd the decision was made to transport Arly by helicopter to Children's Hospital Colorado. This is when I met Arly and her family. Arly had a breathing tube and a chest tube in place and was heavily sedated. Early into taking care of Arly, her oxygen dropped really low and lots of doctors and respiratory therapists had to attend to her, a very scary moment for her parents who had just arrived to see their daughter. We had to place another chest tube and perform another procedure. The medical team believed that Arly was getting better with the new chest tube but on Christmas Eve, Arly was placed on ECMO to support her lungs. Arly spent her first Christmas in the PICU as her parents were scared for their daughter's life.
Some of the days ahead were very scary but we learned quickly that Arly loved bows and so the whole staff made it a priority to switch out her bows daily, even having days where the whole care team matched Arly's bow for the day!
