Day 26

To be cautious, a plan has been set in place for extubation early tomorrow morning.  Her air leak test revealed that she has significant inflamation in her throat so they will give her steriods for 24 hours.  The swelling in her trechea is expected.  Additionally, the xray this morning showed signs of a collapse in a small part of her upper right lung.  She will receive an aggressive treatment of percussion therapy on her chest today, every two hours.  Her blood gases have improved even while I have been typing this, they are back in a normal range. 

The surgeons said that her belly has recuperated enough to take out the NG tube after extubation.  The PICU team will pursue this if cleared by a speech specialist, who will determine if she can swallow and receive bottle feedings.  The idea of this is very exciting.  For the first time in what will be ~27 days, we will see her entire face, thus far she has had a giant tape mustache and a tube in her mouth and nose.

She is still tacicardic and feverial, the jury is still out on the cause: infection? withdrawal? drug induced?  It seems that they will stop the Zosym today as it has been 8 complete days so they may try a different approach or see how she responds without anything.  They will still treat her fevers with IV Tylenol though, to which she is very responsive.

Her platletts have bounced back to 97 from 33 on their own!

Her output from her ostomy bag has increased - which is good and challenging.  For now, draining and changing this thing is easy as Emerson is pretty sedated, however, when this soon to be 17 month old is in high gear - oh boy!  A two person job for sure.

Emmy has had her eyes open often today durning her waking periods.  It is still difficult for her to do so as she contintually raises them during the few minutes they are open.  I do feel that her eyes have a knowing looking about them and that she saw us.  It is difficult with all the sedation but I believe her to be in there.