The Latest

Another day of waiting before we could update everyone. We had to wait until 2:30 before the doctors made their 8 to 12 rounds. You'd think we would be used to hospital time by now. Emma's heart rate continued to be elevated this morning. They thought maybe she needed more pain medication so they gave her a one time dose of the fentanyl (morphine) medication. This didn't make any difference though and her heart rate continued to remain up. Infection can also cause a high heart rate so they will keep an eye on that and start her on another antibiotic and do lab work if they think they need to. She is already on one antibiotic as a precaution due to having her chest tube in. They changed her chest tube to gravity. This means what drains will drain on its own without having suction pull it out. They did an xray about 2 hours ago that looks good and without the suction no air is accumulating. It sound like tomorrow they will put a clamp on the chest tube tubing so that not even gravity can help. They will then check another xray a couple hours after that and if it still looks good they will probably take the chest tube out. In trying to figure out why Emma's heart rate is high they decided at 5 to put her on a regular ventilator thinking maybe she was working too hard against the special one. They also increased the continuous rate of the fentanyl (morphine) and decreased the rate of the versed (the stuff they give you with a colonoscopy) to see if this would make a difference. They are going to check a blood gas to check her oxygen level at 6. So not as good a day as we hoped. We really thought we would be able to hold her today. And, a bit of a frustrating day with different information coming from different people. Hopefully this is as down a day that we will have after surgery.
Keep the prayers coming and God Bless all of you.