And the drainage keeps coming.....

Emma's procedures went great yesterday!  Emma actually overcame a previous obstacle yesterday.  She was able to successfully go to the Operating Room and have a chest tube placed and her broviac line removed without need to be intubated.  Cardiac Anesthesia was successfully able to keep her sedated and still with a medication called ketamine.  This was a huge accomplishment for Emma and we are so proud of her.  The chest tube drained almost 70ccs initially (that is over 2ozs). Imagine having that float around in your lungs.  Upon arriving back to the room, Emma woke up from the sedation and was a little irritable (probably from the chest tube insertation), so we gave her a pain med which helped a little.

Emma slept great last night and we were able to wean her back down to 2 liters of oxygen flow; however, as the day progressed, Emma started acting very cranky and started having desat episodes again.  We had turned her oxygen down to 1 liter today as we thought she could handle it.....needless to say, we have her turned back up to 3 liters and just got an x-ray and chest ultrasound to look for possible fluid on the right side.  Her sats have been fine the last few hours, so hopefully she is settling out.  We also gave her a dose of pain meds.  We don't want her to be in pain, and it is a possibility that if she is, she could be guarding and not breathing like she should (the screaming and crying do not help her sats either).  We have not heard from the team yet on if she has fluid building on the right.  If she does, we will cross that bridge when we get there.

The plan right now is to start pushing  to eat more orally.  The team would really like to see her consuming food instead of formula down the NG tube only.  We also let her wear her helmet for a little bit today and had her do some prop sitting.  Therapists will be restarting therapy this week as well.

All in all, the team is still happy with Emma's status.  They would be happier if she was not draining as much fluid, but like Dr. Forbess said, they are not surprised as she did this after the first surgery and her lymphatics are very prominent.  We are hoping and praying that she does not need to have the chest tubes long and that her drainage will stop soon.


Next week,, my baby will turn one!  What a year it has been!  It looks like we will be celebrating her birthday in the hospital this year, but we will be celebrating and that is what matters.  Both of the cardiac floors are very full right now.  They are talking about sending us to the 8th floor, but we are like number 8 or 9 on the waiting list so we will just have to wait and see.

Prayer Requests:

1. Please pray that Emma's lymph system heals quickly so she can get the chest tubes out.
2. Pray that Emma's sats stay up so we can wean on the oxygen.
3. Pray that Emma tolerates her therapies and continues to progress in her development.
4. Pray that Emma can not be in much pain from the recent procedures.
5. Pray for Emma's heart buddies.
6. Pray for Scott and I was continue on this journey with Emma.

God is good!  All the time!  God is Good!

Much Thanks to all of you who have helped thusfar with the Hope From Emma's Heart project.  We have some really cute things to give to the babies.  We would really like all of the items by October 10th.

We have also been helping with a documentary about HLHS: check out the trailer: HLHS Documentary 
click on the teaser trailer button, and then the teaser trailer #2 button!