Cautiously Going Great

Sorry for the lack of updates yesterday (especially to the grandparents). Kirsten and I just emotionally crashed yesterday-- in a good way-- and didn't realize many folks were as concerned. (Of course, you weren't getting the good updates from the hospital.)

Before I get into all of the nitty-gritty details, allow me one sports metaphor. (If you know me, you know how odd it is that this is my first extended sports metaphor on the blog.) Kirsten and I feel like coaches of an underdog football team playing the number one team in the nation. Our team (Madeleine) has just played a perfect first half-- we simply couldn't have played any better. While the coach of any such team is ecstatic at the first half, they are also extremely cautious to celebrate and/or relax because they know how devastating one play in the second half can be. If I extrapolate this admittedly simplistic metaphor, Madeleine's playing her guts out and simply couldn't have had a better first 24 hours and we're ecstatic. We're not expecting any Hail Mary's from the other side but we're definitely keeping our heads down and worrying about every last detail.

Okay, with the coach in me satisfied, here are the nitty-gritty details:

1) We spoke with Dr. Jonas in the afternoon a few hours after surgery and he reiterated that all of the negative surgical issues had been avoided. They're honestly too long to list out so just take our word for it-- surgery went great.

2) Madeleine has hardly needed blood pressure support. After her previous three surgeries, this was a major problem as the doctors administered "pressers" to keep her blood pressure at a stable level. This time around, they tried giving her dopamine-- a common presser-- but had to stop as her blood pressure was too high. This is great news and bodes well for her recovery.

3) Madeliene-- as expected-- has been intubated (on a ventilator) since the surgery and has been reliant on high levels of oxygen. This was somewhat surprising to us as this has not been an issue following the past three surgeries. However, the doctors and nurses assured us that this is common following a bypass surgery. Furthermore, we learned that Madeleine has done great this morning and the doctors/nurses think that she could be extubated as early as this afternoon. This is REALLY great news as we expected her to be intubated for many more days.

4) Infection: This is the major hurdle left for Madeleine and it isn't likely to be an issue in the next few days. Dr. Jonas explained that his concern for infection isn't in the first few days. Instead, he is concerned about the proximity of the ostomy site to the heart incision and the potential for infection in 4-5 days. While this is a cause for concern, even if she does get an infection, it shouldn't be in the "potentially fatal" category. Instead, it would more than likely just slow down Madeleine's recovery. We can't explain how nice it is to hear a doctor say (and I'm paraphrasing) "Something bad might happen but if it does, it wouldn't be life threatening."

Those are the major issues we're facing right now and we hope that you can see how great everything is going while appreciating how scary this situation is. Kirsten and I are feeling good and we're admittedly reserving some of this good-will until we feel completely out of the woods. Rest assured, we're confident that we will be celebrating in the not too distant future and, if you know us well, you know we won't hold our emotions in check for long.

Kirsten just brought up one other point worth mentioning. For the heart surgery, Madeleine was transferred out of the NICU to the Cardiac ICU (CICU) and we're struggling with some communication challenges. We're not unhappy with the CICU folks at all and we feel like they're doing a great job. However, we know pretty much everyone in the NICU at Children's and the relationships we established allowed us to communicate more effectively. (The NICU folks are also a little more touchy-feely-- as one might expect.) The CICU folks have been great at answering all of our questions-- and we ask a lot of them-- but we're still learning who can best provide answers to specific questions and we're learning how to read the various nurses assigned to Madeleine.

That's all for now. We're headed up to the hospital right now so that we can meet with Madeleine's doctors and-- hopefully-- witness Madeleine's extubation. Keep your prayers coming and your fingers crossed.

Kirsten and Brent