Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Weaning




Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Emma is doing quite well right now. The doctors have been weaning her ventilator settings and they think they may even be able to take her completely off the ventilator. She would still have the trach to keep her airway open. They have been testing it an hour at a time to see how she does. So far, she has had no problems. The ENT doctors are satisfied with her new trach and said they won’t need to see her anymore until the trach comes out unless there is a problem. If things continue to go smoothly, they think we might be able to go back to Mission in a couple weeks. Here is a new picture of her from this weekend. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We have a lot to be thankful for.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Emma's Doing Well






This weekend the nurses finally got to weigh Emma for the first time since her heart surgery. She is 7 pounds 1 ounce now! She is also 19 inches long. Our cardiologist is very happy with her progress. If her only issue was her heart, she would be coming home soon. Unfortunately her airway issue is the big problem right now. They put her trach back in on Thursday and it continues to irritate her airway. She is going to require another surgery this week to laser off some granuloma tissue in her airway. They have ordered her a custom trach as well that will hopefully be in this week. On Friday Emma was very irritated so the ENT doctors came in and scoped her airway again. The trach tube needed to be adjusted and ever since Emma has been doing great. She is finally the size of a newborn baby. She will be 4 months old on Wednesday. Here are a few new pictures of her.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Good Progress

Emma has been recovering very well since her surgery. Each day she has more medicines taken away and her vitals look great. The doctors are very happy with her progress. On Friday they took out her chest tubes and pacing wires. She will not need a pacemaker. Tomorrow she will go back into surgery to put back in the trach. Since going back on feeds, she has been tolerating them well. She will most likely need a tube inserted into her tummy for feeding. They have not weighed her since her surgery, but she is looking much bigger. At last weighing, she was around 5 pounds 11 ounces. If she continues to recover well, I suspect she will be back at Mission soon.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Post Op Pictures

Emma's Room


Emma Post Op

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Recovery

Emma is recovering nicely from her heart surgery on Tuesday. The first 24 hours were rough, but that was to be expected. She had a large team around her for the first 12 hours or so and they were working hard. Her biggest issue was her blood pressure following the surgery. That is under control now though. She is still on high oxygen, but that is about it. They are slowly weaning her off of the multiple medicines that she is on. She is still heavily sedated and not moving at all. I am unsure when they will allow her to start moving again. We got to see all of her new tubes, wires, and incisions yesterday. She looks a little scary right now, but they did a great job with the surgery and will have minimal scarring. There will still be some more ups and downs, but it looks like we are out of the woods. More updates to come.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Success!

Emma had successful heart repair surgery this morning. We arrived at the hospital just before 6:00 and went up and visited her. At about 7:00 the surgery team came to her room to move her move CHOC to St. Joseph’s through the basement tunnel. We spoke with the surgeon and the team prior to the surgery and they had high hopes. At 7:30 they took her into surgery. The pre-op portion was supposed to take between an hour and an hour and a half. At 9:20 we received our first update from the case manager. She came in to tell us that they were well into the surgery. She was on the heart lung bypass machine and Dr. Gates had her chest open. We received our next update about 10:30 saying that the surgery was going well and that Dr. Gates was in the process of repairing the hole in her heart. At about 11:40 the case manager came back in and said that the repair had been completed and that Dr. Gates was in the process of closing her back up. At 11:55 Dr. Gates came in and told us that the surgery went as expected. He told us that the VSD had been repaired and that the valve between the heart and lungs had been widened. He said that this should be a one time surgery and that she shouldn’t have any more heart problems. Overt the next couple of days Emma will be closely monitored. We have been informed that if we see 10 people in her room that we shouldn’t be alarmed. It is all part of the recovery. We are so thankful for the amazing team of doctors and nurses who fixed our daughter’s broken heart. Thank you for all of your prayers, especially this morning. And most of all thank you God for protecting our daughter.

Mark, Alissa, and Emma