Off ventilator

As of right now: 9:33pm




J.

Extubation...

8:59pm
Abi is being extubated at this very moment. If everything goes well, we should be able to see her soon, maybe in 20 minutes.
We thought it will not happen today, firstly because of the fluids building in the lungs and secondly because of her saturation that suddenly dropped down to low 80's from high 90's. The nurses couldn't figure out what caused a sudden saturation drop. We prayed it wasn't a stepback for Abi to get exchubated today. After a chest x-ray, they found out the breathing tube was lower than it should. After adjusting the tube, Abi's sats went right back to 90's. :)
This didn't have an influence on the decition to remove the tube.

She was so sweet today. We spent over 6 hours with her. She slept and rested for the most part. When she woke up, she would wiggle and move a lot. It's easy to imagine how uncomfortable this poor girl is. When she cries or caugths, we can't hear anything because of the tubes in her mouth. We can just tell by her facial expressions... It's so sad to see this... especially when we can't pick her and cuddle. I'm not even mentioning the thirst and hunger! When the nurse put a little sponge into her mouth soaked with destilated water to clean the inside of her mouth, she was ready to eat it!! 
Hopefully, after 4 hours from extubation she will be able to get some milk!

Thank you for carying and praying 4 Abi!

Thoughts At The Bedside

1.55pm

We've been at Abi's bed for the past couple hours. She wakes up very often, keeps her eyes open and looks at us. Then she's getting impatient and looks like she would like to say something; her eyes are unbelievable; they speak for her.

Due to her airways being swallen they had to postpone extubating her until this evening. She's on Decadrone, a steroid that will get the swelling healed. They will check again and if everything goes well she will be extubated tonight. If there are no stepbakcs we will try feeding her a bottle about 6-8 hours after taking her off of the ventilator. If she takes the bottle and tolerates the food they won't put the feeding tube in!!!! This would be great since this will be one of the things keeping us in the hospital once she's out of the CICU (Cardiac Intensive Care Unit).

The next steps will be to remove the central line that is in her neck, removing the access line that is going from her tummy to the inside of her left atrium and pulling out the last chest tube that is draining the fluids from the heart area out.

If this goes fine and there are no stepbacks she should go to the stepdown unit and being there is mostly for the parents to learn carding for a child after open heart surgery. Since there are 2 classes we will need to take we are planning on starting as soon as possible, so on Monday morning we will take the 'how to care for a child after heart surgery' class and in the afternoon the CPR class. We have taken this one after Abi was born but we will take it again.

So we may be done with the classes before she settles down in the Step Down unit.

I just talked to the nurse and, she didn't want me to get too excited so she unwillingly said yes, but she did say yes when I said there was a very realistic chance we would be home next weekend!!! This would be best best case scenario, but we saw a couple of those this past week, didn't we! ;-)

Good Morning , I'm Breathing

6.12am

Just a short note. Abi did great last night. Her breathing test went well. Right now, even though she has the tube in her own breathing rate is in low/mid 40s- exactly where it should be. This is wonderful.

Right now she's sleeping after Versed since she was a bit active ;-) and moving around. This is good but not at this moment, since the ventilator tube can irritate her throat causing some swelling which could lead to some difficulties with breathing after taking the tube out.

Let's wait for more good news today!




Art


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