Day 2
Thank you all so much for your prayers and following along with Esther’s progress.
I thought I could prepare myself for the ups and downs but only on day 2 and I’m a wreck. This morning she had blood pressure issues and once they gave her some medication it seemed to make her much happier. She had an issue with her chest tube not draining but the doctors quickly fixed that.
This afternoon the kids were able to say hi to their sister. The kids love her so much.
I stopped by after dinner to a lot of people in the room. The neonatologist informed me that they needed to start her on ECMO. Her lungs we were working to hard and it was making thigs much worse for her. Once the were set up I had to leave. It took them a couple hours to hook up the machine. Once they were done we were able to talk more with her surgeon about what this means for Esther.
Everything that they were trying before was making things worse for Esther. The oscillator that was breathing and supplying air to her lungs is what was causing tiny tears that were leaking oxygen. Because they needed to have the oscillator on so high it was making things worse. With her being in ECMO, it completely rest the lungs so they will heal and she will get better. The pressure from the oscillator was pushing on her heart also, and starting to cause damage. The ECMO machine will let her heart rest too so it can heal.
They will run test after a few days to see how she is handling being on ECMO. They will test her lungs with a puff of air to see if it’s healing. She can stay on ECMO up to 21 days. But ideally it will be less than 14. Their are lots of risks for her on ECMO. And I hope we won’t have to deal with any of them. So I won’t go over them. Just pray for no complications. Pray she heals miraculously fast. Once she can come off ECMO and can prove herself to be strong with out it they can do her repair surgery.
All the machines keeping Esther alive. The stuff on the right is the ECMO.
The two red tubes are acting as her heart and lungs. Delivering blood to her so she can rest.
Her surgeon is very optimistic about Esther. This will help and she will do great. But it’s still scary and a last resort for her. I know she is covered in prayers and I appreciate it so much. She is doing alright right now. Dave and I stayed with her most the night and she is looking good.
For family stuff, we are still waiting to get into the hospitality house that is connected to the hospital. They have no rooms available and we would really like to be able to stay their as soon as possible. It makes things so much easier to be close to Esther and the other kids.