Amelia has conquered the Glenn!
It's been a while since I have updated. 2 weeks ago, Amelia had her third heart surgery, this is the one we have been waiting for! This one was our ticket home. The Glenn itself is much shorter than her first surgery, the Norwood, but she had a big day ahead. She not only was having heart surgery, but she also had a bronchoscopy, and a cath. The bronch showed nothing exciting. The cool thing about her Glenn is that they did it in the hybrid cath lab. They were able to do the surgery and then do a cath to see if they had opened up the pulmonary artery enough. So, Dr. A finished the surgery and then they did the cath and saw that there was a small portion that needed to opened more. They were able to go back in right away to fix it, instead of doing another cath later on. While in her heart, Dr.A squeezed her shunt to see if it would effect her oxygen sats, and it didn't. Her body created little veins called collaterals. They think that her shunt close slowly enough, that it gave her body time to grow these collaterals. These wonderful little veins got the blood where it needed to go. "Those little things kept her alive"-Dr. A.
What a miracle! She is so strong. Her body created life saving veins. Wow, so amazed by God.
The day was long, 12 hours to be exact. We took Emma to the zoo to pass time. Still a very hard day. Letting a team wheel her out of the room is just the most ridiculous thing in the world. I have never hurt so much. My perfect baby, with an imperfect heart. It's not her fault, yet she has to feel all the pain. The days following were awful. She was in so much pain from the chest tubes. She was just drugged for 5 days, and by the end, the drugs were no longer helping. In that time, she developed chylothorax. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chylothorax). She was switched from breast milk to a formula that is known to be just disgusting. She had a hard time adjusting it. Since then, they have adjusted the formula and now she is doing well(knock on wood).
She is doing so well right now. Her heart is behaving and she is on the fast track to go home!! I never thought I would say those words, "we're going home soon!"
It's true, though. We could be going home within the next couple weeks. We have a couple kinks to work out though. Amelia needs home nursing at night and because we live in a small area, in the middle of no where, it will be hard to find nurses. There is a possibility that they would send us home without nursing set up, but we won't find out until we have a big meeting with all the doctors. That meeting will be Monday, hopefully!
We have had multiple training classes on the trach and all the equipment coming home with us. Now David and I both need to do 24 hour care sessions, where we take care of Amelia, all on our own, for a full day.
Ah, I'm tired just thinking about it all!
Prayer requests: strength! This will be a tough transition!
Nursing! We need nursing to work out soon, it will be a big burden lifted off our backs.
Thank you, everyone for your prayers and support. It means the world to us!
Love y'all,
Kelly
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