Maddi's off the vent

Maddison got off the vent yesterday! She did well but it is very difficult to watch her come off. They really have to have her awake to take it out so she gets all red in the face. They also put in another IV since one went bad and took out two stitches, all within 30 minutes. I was able to hold her for quite some time yesterday so that was nice!




She is on quite a bit of oxygen with the nasal cannula but we hope to wean that down some today. Overall her stats look good, even better than last time. She’s resting now so I was able to do a quick update. We’ll see what the plan is today. Hopefully we’ll go down on the oxygen and possibly start feeds.



I’ve attached a photo, this was from yesterday.
Ashley

Open heart #3...done!

"Open chest"

   Maddi is such a strong little girl. They took her into the heart cath yesterday morning at 8:45 as planned. After injecting a type of die into her arteries to illuminate them on the x-ray they determined that it was not possible to be fixed by cath. (as I talked about in the last post) so they prepared her for open heart surgery again immediately. It caught us off guard when they came in to tell us, because that wasn’t what we were expecting. But…God expected it, and He already knew the outcome!

  

   The aneurysm was formed on the conduit that they placed into her heart during the surgery on February 21st, due to a combination of factors. They found that the infection was actually yeast, which is why the antibiotics weren’t working, as antibiotics treat bacteria. Yeast is a fungus. The antibiotics that she has been on for over a week now, have made her immune system lower. A combination of the yeast, the antibiotics and the fact that there were new suture lines from the previous surgery made it possible for the aneurysm to form. We were told that had she gone even another day that she was at risk of the aneurysm to rupture. It was at first overlooked and passed off as pneumonia. BUT GOD… brought it to light and the problem was found and addressed before it could do harm to our little girl.

   During the surgery they removed a portion of the conduit and all of the aneurysm and replaced it with another conduit with “extra sutures” this time, so that it shouldn’t form again. She did well during surgery and was able to come off of bypass on the first try this time with minimal bleeding. Her O2 stats came back up to better than normal levels, in the 90’s, her average is 75%.

"chest closed"

   Now they will continue to test the culture from the yeast to find what strand of yeast it is so that it can be treated appropriately. Today her chest was closed and they did an anti fungal wash inside her chest cavity before closing it to take care of any remaining yeast. Her stats are doing GREAT, We were told by the doctors that this was one of the best post-op recoveries they’ve seen (praise God) especially given the fact that it was a re-operation. Over the next couple of days she will come off of the ventilator and go through the whole process that she did last week all over again. And if all goes well, and it will, she would be able to come home with in around 3 weeks.

Thank you for all of your continued prayers and support. Prayer truly does work!!

<>< Isaiah 53:5 ><>


But He [was] wounded for our transgressions, He [was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon Him; and with His stripes we [ARE] healed. That includes Maddi !!


-Mike

Maddi is not doing so good today...

Well for the past few days Maddi hasn't been doing great, she has been sleeping all day and had labored breathing. They did a CT scan and found that she had another aneurysm on her heart, this time on the left side. From what we were told it was caused by how the sutures healed after the surgery on Feb, 21st. So tomorrow morning (3/11/11) at 8:45, they will be taking her into a heart cath to insert a coil into the aneurysm to stop the blood flow and get it to clot in that area. So that it no longer continues to grow. As long as that works then they will not have to open her back up again. But they have also told us that it is a possibility that the cath will not fully repair all of the problem, and that they may have to go back in and do surgery again.

Please keep us in your prayers especially tomorrow. This is a very hard time for us as a family to deal with all of this. But little Maddi has it much harder, with what she has already gone through and what is yet to come. We "know" that God has already made a way for her, even when there seems to be no way. He knew that this was to come and He has already made provision for her. Maddi will be 100% whole again soon, at home playing again with big sister.

Thank you all for all of your continued support and prayers it helps us a lot to know that there are so many people out there praying for our little girl.