Wednesday morning

Yesterday was a long and stressful day. Emma Kate held her own through a lot. They removed her last chest drain, attempted to place a PICC line (unable to get it), placed a subclavian line, pulled her jugular line, and removed her urinary catheter. They were tied up with her so much of the day that it seemed we were only in with her a short time until evening. She has been breathing spontaneously much of the day but still has a considerably drawn out exhalation, so they expect the repair area is still collapsing. By late evening she had not produced any urine (having the catheter in for so long can often times lead to a delay in the ability to urinate on your own again), so they did an in-and-out catheter to relieve her bladder. Overnight she did finally have a bowel movement (thank goodness, she's been on all sorts of laxatives...) and it was quite messy, so they elected to put her foley catheter back in to reduce the risk of a bladder infection if they had to keep doing the in-and-out catheter repeatedly. She also started to swell up again last night, her hands, feet, and eyelids are so puffy. They started her back on IV lasix instead of the oral form she had been on. Her attending Dr is hoping that it might ease her breathing a bit too.

This morning we've been stressed out watching her heart rate and blood pressure go up, and occasionally her O2 saturation drops. She's moving around a bit, and even after giving a bolus of her sedation her HR and BP don't change too much. There's talk of possibly scoping her again this afternoon (we were supposed to be waiting until Monday...) with the hopes of possibly being able to dilate her airway a little bit to allow better breathing. It makes me nervous because this whole time they've talked about delaying dilation attempts until several weeks out from surgery.