Even more good news :)

Posted Oct 12, 2007 11:17pm

Hey everyone,
Just wanted to give an update from today on baby girl. She is doing well. She was taken off most of her medicines today, Milrinone, Dopamine, TPN, and Heparin. She is doing so well. She is still quite tired from all of the drama this week. She had her foley catheter, chest tubes, pacer wires, and arterial line all taken out too. She still has one iv and her central line in for saftey measures. The central line will come out tomorrow. They are now giving her Tylenol with Codeine for pain and three doses a day of Lasix to pull fluid off of her lungs, and another water pill to help with that also. She will go home on that pain medication and also Lasix to help with the fluid build up after surgery. She is currently trying to cough up mucus but is not successful. She is struggling to do it, and when attempted her oxygen goes down. Hopefully she will get better and when we are able to pick her up all of the time that will help. Currently she just wants to rest a lot. When all of the tubes were pulled today I was able to hold her for the first time since surgery. This was a wonderful feeling, awkward at first though. Once situated, she cuddled right into me as usual. They are attempting to get her to eat by mouth, but she just wants to sleep. They have placed another NG tube in, but promise that she will not go home on it. They are just wanting her to begin getting nutrition to heal. They are going to be pushing the food intake quite a bit over the next day or so. Also she is now on 100% oxygen, 1 1/2 liters via cannula, and will attempting weaning her through the night. She had a chest xray done today, which was a little hazy so they gave an extra dose of water pill to her to help clear her lungs. She also had a lung perfusion scan done to show the amount of blood flow to her lungs. Prior to surgery they were concerned with the amount to the left, once the test was completed it showed that she was 61% on the right and 39% on the left. Normal for this test is 55% right and 45% left, so she is nearly perfect. They are thrilled with the results. Yeah!! It has been decided for sure, we will be moving to Stepdown tomorrow (Saturday). Yeah!! They feel that if she continues to progress well that she may be home by the middle of next week. So great news for today. The remaining concerns before going home are food intake, removing the oxygen, and clearing her lungs.
We will continue to keep everyone posted on her status. Thanks so much for the thoughts and prayers on baby girl. She is a fighter and continues to prove everyone wrong with her healing process. That is our baby!! Thanks again and we will talk soon.

Love, Jenny, Justin and Jenna