Sunday, July 27, 2008

Still moving in the right direction

Grace is still moving forward despite all of her obstacles, she is now on a rate of 16 and oxygen is still at 35%. When we walked in we were surprised to see the wound vac on her chest--we were told that was a possible option to help her chest heal. Hopefully, the wound vac will work properly and quickly and our little Gracie's wounds will get better and look better. Last night when we were visiting her chest did look terrible--almost like the skin was eroding away. Our nurse this morning told us that by using the vac we are hopefully preventing the need for a skin graft.

Gracie is also completely off her dopamine and epinephrine (they are used to help with blood pressure mostly) and maintaining great blood pressure and heart rate numbers for her. She also started her continuous feeds, currently she only gets about 1 ounce over the course of 24 hours. Hopefully she will tolerate the breast milk well enough seeing that its about one of the few things I can do for my sweetie right now :)

All of these steps have worn my baby out, Jason and I were with her for about 4 hours and she slept the entire time. The only chance we had to see her beautiful eyes was when her vitals were being taken and we changed her diaper. She would let us know she wasn't happy by scrunching up her little face and breathing at a higher frequency, then withing minutes she would roll her eyes back into her head, shut them, and be out. But she deserves to just rest and relax.

5 comments:

lori said...

So happy to hear of improvements! Hope you're all able to get some rest after a CRAZY couple of weeks. You're in our prayers constantly!

Erica said...

I am happy to hear that Gracie is starting to improve in so many ways. She is one tough little girl. Eden is doing well. We are still just waiting to see if things are going to begin working for her as they should.
Even though you have a long way to go, I hope you can start to breathe a little easier now.

Jamie G. said...

Nice to hear!! Tell her to Keep Up The Good Work!!

Summer said...

This great news! We hope litte Gracie contiues to progress. What a little fighter she is. Our prayers are with you.
With love, Summer Strickland
(Mason's (HLHS) Mommy)
We met Emily and Mike in the PICU in December and we are also good friends with Mark Larson

Megan said...

What is amazing to me, Deanna, is how much power and strength a spirit can have. I've never noticed how truly alive the spirit is in these newborns we give birth to. But from these last few weeks of reading your blog and hearing about the ups and downs of your beautiful Grace, I've come to a new appreciation of that fact. It's easy to fall into a routine of feeding and diaper changing and taking for granted the amazing spirits that are blessing our lives. It sounds like you have noticed this and I thank you for sharing this inspiring little girl with me(even if it is vicariously through a blog).