3/16 Everyone's Stable Today

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday afternoon-- we were exhausted. Things are going much better today. We visited the hospital yesterday afternoon and were extremely impressed by the nurses at Children's. When we left yesterday at 6 in the morning, Madeleine was very pale (to be expected after surgery) and she just didn't look right. When we got there in the afternoon, they had her wrapped up and her color had already returned. In addition, they added a bunny beany baby to sleep next to her (preparation for sleeping with our dog Grady) and the nurse also glued a ribbon to her head (surgical glue-- she was sick of everyone calling her a boy.) Kirsten and I spent over an hour talking with the nurse and at the end of the discussion, she put Kirsten to work, taking Madeleine's temperature, changing her diaper and rubbing her body with lotion-- between the morphine drip and lotion, Madeleine was in hospital spa heaven.

The nurse laid out the game plan for the next few days: first and foremost, they want to avoid infection and are monitoring her constantly for any signs (no signs as of 10:30 this morning.) They consider Madeleine to be in a critical state until 72 hours post surgery so we're not out of the woods yet (but the first 24 hours is the most important, so we do feel a little better...) The other focus is on slowly weaning Madeleine off of the blood pressure medicine (dopamine) and eventually to take her off of the respirator. They weaned her quite a bit yesterday on the dopamine and she is breathing room air through the respirator. At this point, they're mostly stopping the weaning process until we clear the next 48 hours. So, we're essentially back to the same game plan of hoping for a boring few days. Let's hope this works better the second time around.

There is one other piece of data that we'll be following over the next few days-- the heart. Remember back to Friday's post (I can't believe it has only been two days) and the cardiologists were very happy to report that the PDA (duct) was closed and the clot appeared to be decreasing in size. Yesterday, the cardiologist at Children's feared that the PDA was reopened-- this wasn't completely surprising as they explained that the amount of fluid exchange during surgery may have temporarily opened the duct. At this point, they're just going to monitor for the next few days since Madeleine isn't stable enough for surgery. We're obviously hoping that the duct closes on its own but we are happy that if necessary, there is a great surgical team on site at Children's that can address this issue. The other heart issue is the clot-- the previous echo cardiagrams did not travel from Holy Cross with Madeleine so the cardiologists could not confirm that the clot has changed in size. We're hoping it continues to decrease in size and the next few days should help us confirm this hope.

A final quick note about us: sorry if I scared anyone yesterday with my post-- I had a tough day yesterday and I definitely leaned on Kirsten post-surgery. In any case, we spent last night with some good friends and it really helped to act like a normal human being for a few hours. (that is, as normal as I can get) We also slept for about 12 hours-- both Kirsten and I didn't believe the alarm clock this morning-- and we're feeling much better today. We're as confident as ever that Madeleine's going to conquer all of her challenges and we're slowly learning that while taking each day one at a time, this is going to be a marathon adventure. There are definitely going to be some long days but between Madeleiene's resiliency and the tremendous support of family and friends, we're feeling really good. Have a relaxing end to the weekend and keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Brent and Kirsten