One step forward, two steps back

  As of Thursday, Lucy was doing great and we were steps away from going back to the NICU.  They needed to put in a PIC line (which is pretty much an IV) and remove the thoracic line (which is a port with access straight to the the heart).  Below is Lucy on Wednesday

  As I was getting ready to leave to visit Lucy, I received a call from the hospital.  The nurse told me that during the removal of the thoracic line, Lucy coded.  She was currently stable and the surgeon was currently monitoring her vitals.  I called Mike and let him know what happened.  When I got to the hospital the nurse came to let me know what had happened so far.  When the thoracic line was pulled there should have been some bleeding outside of the body.  However the bleeding ended up around the heart placing pressure on her heart and Lucy went into cardiac arrest.  The team started chest compressions immediately and then the surgeon had to open her up to suction the blood.  Once the blood was suctioned her heart started beating again. The team then closed the sternum and started stitching her up, then her blood pressure dropped.  The surgeon had to open her back up and leave the sternum open in order bring her blood pressure up.  Mike and I just sat watching as all this happened.  It was devastating walking into the hallway of Lucy's room seeing so many nurses, doctors and surgeons in scrubs walking in and out of her room.  Mike said he counted twenty two people.  All of this took about 3 hours.  We were able to go in and see Lucy around eleven.  When all was said and done Lucy was hooked back up to all the machines and medicine when she came out of surgery 10 days ago.  The last thing they did was keep her at colder than normal temperature to slow her metabolism which is supposed help with any damage to the brain, liver and kidneys that could have been sustained during the cardiac arrest.  That was the last straw for us, we couldn't stay and watch her shiver.  We decided it was best to go home and try to get some rest.

  In the month that we have been blessed with Lucy, I have to say that was the hardest day.  I'm not sure if it was the phone call stating she had coded, watching so many people in her room getting her stable or just the thought that this simple procedure has pushed us back to square one.  She is one strong girl though as the doctors did tell us about five hours after stitching her up, they were happy with how she is recovering.  When we left the hospital Thursday night, the nurse stated that they would have a better idea of how Lucy handled the trauma after the nightly labs were run.  Here is Lucy after Thursday

  On Friday when we arrived at the hospital we found they had lowered the doses of the medicines she was placed on.  The tests and scans showed there was no damage to her liver, kidneys or brain.  She was supposed to be really puffy from the all the fluids but looked a lot better than anticipated.  The team is going to continue to lower all her medicine and Monday they will go back in to close the sternum.  The recovery from this should be a lot quicker than surgery so we hope they can start to remove her from all her machines and get back on track to getting her to the NICU to grow so we can bring her home.

We ask that you pray for a quick and clean procedure when the team closes her sternum.
Strength for Lucy as she deals with this trauma and a healthy recovery
Strength for Mike and I as we deal with each day as it comes.