Sunday, January 6, 2008

Reality Check

Sorry if this is a "downer" for some people. I just want people to understand the extent of the situation. It's hard to fully convey the gravity through this blog. The doctor is still very pessimistic. He honestly doesn't think Abby will pull through this.

She is very critically sick. She is still day to day. She is one of the most sick kids in the unit. Her ECMO treatment was one of the worst ones they have had. The nurses haven't seen a patient like her in over 10 years. When we say she had a "good" day - it mean she was stable. She will be in the hospital for a long time - at least many more weeks, probably months.

Abigail has a lot of edema. Her vessels leak fluids into her body. She doesn't leak blood, it's just bodily fluids into the body cavities. It's like when you bump your head. That area swells because the vessels leak fluids into that area. Your body does this because that is how the cells that heal get to the wounded area. Her whole vascular system is leaking and swelling. They can't really do anything about this - she just has to heal on her own.

She loses about 150 cc's per 24 hour period through her dialysis. She currently has to lose over 2000 cc's to get back to some semblance of "normal." At that rate it would take about 13-14 days. The problem is time is against her. Every day she has her chest open, the risk of infection goes up. She is already on heavy duty antibiotics (that is one reason why she hasn't gotten an infection yet), if she does get one, it would most likely be fatal.

She is considered in "renal failure." Her kidneys produce about 5-10% of normal urine output. They keep hoping her kidneys start working soon. It could be because she is intravascularly dehydrated. It could be because the swelling is compressing the kidneys.

Her lungs are a mess. Her right lung is hyper expanded. Her left lung is heavily congested. But they still seem to be working enough for now. They will be a problem in the future if she can get past the rest of the stuff.

Her pulmonary arteries will have to be "ballooned" sometime down the line. Don't really know much about this, it's just something that has been mentioned.

The good news is, she is still seems to be slowly moving in the right direction. Every day we go in, we hope for the best. We never know what will happen, what the doctors will tell us, what lab reports come back with news of an infection, or what something we don't even know about will come up.

She did poop today while we were there. We don't even take that for granted. It means her GI tract is still working and the breast milk is going in the right direction. Hopefully they will increase the amount of milk they give her. It is like liquid gold because it has antibodies that help her immune system.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My thoughts and prayers are with you guys.