Thursday, April 16, 2009 Will Things Ever Start Looking Up?

I have been on the phone with Shailee's nurses several times today, and they haven't gave me the best news today. Shailee is still stable and doing ok, but she had to be put on antibiotics today because she has a mild case of phnemonia. She started having her spells again today where she gets very irritable and arches up and then her oxygen and heart levels drop, so they did a blood culture and chest x-ray to come to their diagnosis. her white blood cell count is up which means there is an infection, and her chest x-ray came back a little hazy again. they are going to do another chest x-ray tomorrow to check it out again as well. But they are pretty sure that the antibiotics will clear it all up without any problems, they also think that once it is all cleared up that it is going to result in her having a lower amount of secretions as well, which is a good thing. her temp was also up a bit today, right around 100.2. they decreased the milrinone (heart med) and then took her off of it, but they had to put her back on it due to her being sick so there wasn't extra stress on the heart. the surgeons are also going to stop back by sometime today or tomorrow to look at her omphalecele because they looked at it today and said that it looked more descending (fuller) today then it normally does, so they will be following up soon to check that out and see what is going on, but it could be due to her being up to a full feeding now. So right now they are just letting her rest and not taking any new steps with her until she gets over being sick, but the plan is once she is better to plan her trach and g tube surgery so she can get ready to come home, they also think that there is a chance that once the trach is placed and the paralyzed vocal chords are bypassed that she may be ok to breathe on her own and have rich enough oxygen, but that is something that we wont really know until that time comes, but we can hope for the best. but she will still have to be suctioned since she doesn't have a gag reflex she doesn't know to swallow so the secretions that she does have can enter the windpipe and get into her lungs and she will be vulnerable to get phnemonia more. she may have to come home on heart medication too, but it will be given to her through her g tube. But once again it is something that we are going to have to wait and see what happens when that time comes. I will update more tomorrow as i find things out.