Helena had her shunt surgery Monday, and it went well. The surgeon called her a champ and said she did great. Since then she's been in the Pediatric Surgical Heart Unit recovering (They call it the PSHU. Because we're mature adults we've taken to calling it the Pikachu) and everyone says she's doing great.
They took her off the ventilator yesterday afternoon, but kept her on her sedatives over night so that she could rest and get good sleep after the HUGE adjustment of finally being off the vent. She's basically been on a ventilator her whole little life, so getting off of it and having her numbers all stay good is big. It's a giant adjustment for her, so they're just letting her take the lead and not pushing her too hard.
Our sleepy little girl resting after her big day
Helena had a great night, got a lot of good sleep and rested well. This morning all numbers are looking great and settling back to where they're supposed to be after the big day yesterday. They're going to start giving her food again, which makes this Polish / Italian / Greek family very happy! It'll be through the tube again since eating from a bottle is a workout for a normal baby, for her only 4 days post-surgery it'd just be too much. That's another goal for another day. Baby steps. Getting off the vent was huge. Eating will be huge for her too, and it should make her happy.
We're taking things slowly, and easing her off of the pain meds and sedatives carefully and just letting her heal and recover from surgery. Her body has a lot to adjust to and we don't want to overwork or overwhelm her so we're following her lead. Everyone says she's doing really well, and we're so very glad to hear it.
All her nurses and doctors have also said she's incredible feisty, which we consider a very good thing. Apparently when they extubate babies, their voices / cries are usually very weak right after, especially if they've been on the vent for a long time like Helena had been. Not Helena though. They told us that when they took the vent out yesterday she screamed and you could hear her down the hall. That's our girl :)
No comments:
Post a Comment