Anna Grace - June 26

Let me start by saying thank you to everyone who is posting comments on our BLOG and sending us e-mails. We can't respond to everyone, but please know that we are reading your comments and e-mails and we sincerely appreciate you taking the time to "drop us a note" of encouragement. We thank you for walking the journey with us.

Now.... to update you on Anna Grace. She has been in some pain as you would expect and the doctors have been trying to keep that under control with medication. Her nurse last night said she was VERY UPSET to wake up with the vent in. Thankfully this morning about 9:00 am they were able to extubate her. Her blood gases and been good since extubation so as long as that continues to remain good then they are going to let me try to feed her a few ounces of milk around 2:00 today.

Her chest x-ray this morning showed that her lungs "were wet" so they have given her a diruetic to help her body release that fluid. Her face is still swollen along with her eyes, but overall she looks good. Well... that's relative really. She looks better than she did after her Norwood.

She has lots of tubes in her right now.... pacing wires, chest tube, RA line, groin lines and an IV in her foot as well as a nasal cannula for some supplemental oxygen. We are praying that over the next 24-48 hours she will be able to start losing some of those.

We won't know about the Chylothorax until we start feeding her food so I imagine that if she is able to start eating today we'll start to see evidence of chylothorax (if she has it) within about 24 hours.

Please continue to pray with us about the chylothorax, pray that is is able to take food by mounth and keep it down, pray that the pressures in her head will not cause her too much pain, pray that her body is able to release the excess fluid it is retaining, pray that her white blood cell count remains normal and that she maintains a normal body temperature.

Thank you friends. We will try to make another update tonight before bed time.