Day 2, Post Surgery

Philippians 4:6-7

“Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace.”

Ella Update from Abbey:

"1) Last night I learned that the doctor actually closed 3 holes. The VSD was closed with the Dacron patch, the ASD was closed with the stitch and the PDA was closed with ligation. Basically he tied it off. All babies are born with the PDA and they usually just close shut after a few days, but hers did not! 

2) They have officially started to wean her off of the ventilator. This could take a while as they are going to start weaning her very slowly. She still wants to try breathing over her vent a bit. They just want to go nice and slow since they are still wanting to give her lungs the opportunity to heal.  Her lungs were considered "sick" from all of the extra blood going to them and all the work that they had to do prior to surgery. She is going to continue to stay sedated until they are actually ready to take the tube out. They said that the tube is very irritating and can hurt. Once it is time to take it out, they will let her wake up. They want her to be fully awake and ready to breath on her own instead of all relaxed and chilled out. Her being upset will make her want to breath. 

3)  They turned off her pacemaker again today to see if the part of her heart that was "asleep" yesterday has "woken up." It is the part of her heart right next to the hole that they patched. Yesterday it was beating slower than they liked and irregular so they wanted to keep her on her pacemaker. Today during the cardiologists rounds, they tried again. Her heart is still beating slower than they like on its own, but it was beating regularly. This is good! This means that her heart is "waking up." They went ahead and left it off for a bit, like 5 minutes. The entire time it did have a regular heart beat. She is slowly taking her time, but is healing!

4) They are still doing her breathing treatments every 6 hours. This is to help get the mucus and gunk out of her lungs that is left over from surgery.  She is also not getting the mucus out on her own since she is sedated. She sounds a little better each time they do it. 

5) She has been responding well to her blood pressure med. It is not nearly as sporadic as it was yesterday. Her systolic number was all over the place yesterday. Today it has been more consistent. They are thinking that once she is showing that she is able to tolerate her feeds and is up to 24 mLs they might do an oral blood pressure medication.  

6) They are going to put back in her feeding tube today and start feeds and see how she does. She is going to start out at 5 mLs every hour. Every few hours they will reevaluate her feeds and determine if they need to go up or not."

Prayer Request
Continue those prayer's.  THEY ARE WORKING!!!  Pray that today is the day that Ella is able to start heading down the path of great healing.  Pray that she is kept comfortable and that she continues to show signs of breathing on her own.  Pray that she is able to tolerate her feeds today and that she continues to amaze her family, doctor's, and nurse's.  Finally, please pray for her daddy and brothers who are missing their mommy and sister. 

Thank you for checking in on Ella and for continuing to hold her in your prayers.  In this season of Thanksgiving, I am so thankful for all of the wonderful friends and family that we are blessed with.  Thank you so much.
-Heather