Surgery recovery update #2

Summer on Aug 24th 2008...still very tiny

Time to stop holding our breath...for the moment. Summer is looking better and better all the time. She still has a few days to prove she is really improving.

Sleepy Summer Sept. 8th 2008 ... check out the cute little bed head...none of my other kids ever had this much hair even at 7 months old!

As of today at 2:00 PM she had been on the conventional ventilator for a couple of hours and doing well. Her oxygen was turned down to 35% and the settings were reduced. She is now breathing over the vent (taking more of her own breaths than the machine is set to do for her). She is much more responsive even though she is still on morphine. The conventional vent will help her blood pressure regulate on it's own...she will not need medications any more to raise it to a normal level. In the next couple of days they will do a spinal tap to check the fluid. They are expecting (and hoping) the infection to have only settled in her bloodstream and not made it's way up to her brain. The doctor is very happy with how she is slowly improving and encouraged by this. They took an x-ray while I was there and she still has a small section of lung that is somewhat hazy...this means she still has some fluid there that she needs to loose...she is now peeing a large amount so will hopefully get rid of it soon. As soon as she looks stable enough they want to start feeding her and continue the recovery process....yet another deep breath...

Some of surgery evidence...I am told Summer will have a small amount of scarring over time

The attending doctor, Dr. Lauren, is on he schedule for the next two weeks. I met him today and talked with him about Omegaven. He is the Neonatologist who for the last two years, has been the advocate for it. He told me that he doesn't think Summer will need it at all. I asked him why and he said it is because she will be able to eat. As I have said before, when the child can cycle their TPN (be off for any amount of time during the day) they can maintain good Bilirubin numbers and not damage the liver as quickly or as much. This is a different view point than we have heard before, but since he has experience with it, is very encouraging! For the next two weeks we will continue picking his brain for details...

More info. on Summer's recovery to come....