Progress

First off, we are sorry for the delay in our posts.  I know many of you depend on this blog to know what is going on and to get the progress of Eden.  For most of you it's the only way you can find out what is going on and also know that everything is going okay so we will try harder to keep everyone up to date.

FRIDAY:

Friday was NOT a good day.  We had high hopes for a good day for it was the day to close her chest...  They closed her chest Friday afternoon and sewed her back up and we were so excited to be making progress.  Well, Eden must not have appreciated the progress (she must like it here in the PICU) because she didn't respond well.  Her blood pressure crashed, her O2 levels dropped and she stopped peeing.  Not good.  We, along with the medical staff, were very worried about Emerson all day Friday and couldn't believe she wasn't doing better.  Late Friday night she finally decided to get on board our plan for her and her blood pressure and oxygen levels went up.  She still didn't want to pee so they gave her some steroids to help her (is this the excuse Barry Bonds used?).

Here is a picture of her with her chest closed.

You will see the nice incision down the middle of her chest.  She still has in her chest tubes and between the two chest tubes you see 4 lines for medicine to go directly to the heart.  She still is rather swollen and heavily sedated in this picture.  

SATURDAY:

Today was a great day!  We came in the morning after a very stressful Friday and sleepless night to find Eden fully cooperating!  She urinated more than she took in and her circulation was good again. While we were at the hospital the doctors came in and were so happy with her progress and lack of drainage from her chest tubes that they decided to pull out the chest tubes.

Here is a picture of her with one out and one in.

Here is a picture of her after all the little procedures.

SUNDAY:

Eden is doing so great.  They have an NG tube (a feeding tube down her nose) in her now.  She is getting 2 cc of breast milk every hour.   If you look closely you can see the little line coming out of her nose. Not a lot of food, yet, but a HUGE step forward for her and us!

Eden is starting to wake up now and look around.  It's amazing to see her start to track mommy an daddy with her eyes.  They are starting to lower her medicines.  They took her off her epinephrine which helped her heart beat, so now she is beating on her own with no help.  They are also lowering her phentinol which is a pain medicine.  One of the nurses said, "it's like 100 times more powerful than morphine."  So as they slowly decrease the medicines and she becomes less dependent upon them we will be able to get her off the machine that breathes for her.  This will be a great mile stone for Eden when her breathing tube is removed.  At that point we can start to hold her a little and feed her.  Remember:  This week (Wed.) was our goal for this.  Keep your fingers crossed and we'll keep praying for Wednesday.

Again, Keisa and I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers.  We really feel your love and are strengthened by your concern and interest.  We can't close today's post without letting everyone also know what a blessing we feel this has been for our family.  We feel closer to each other, all of you and the Lord.  We see a little more clearly now and our testimony of our Savior's love, grace and atonement seems a little more tangible.  We love you all so much and thank you for everything you do.