Surgery #2 and Friday update

Surgery last night was successful at ballooning open her bent stent from wed.'s surgery. They did have to access her artery through an incision in her groin in addition to the incision in her neck so she was really sore and had to lay completely flat without moving for the first 6 hours which she was not happy about. She was in the OR for 2 hours and then in recovery until we saw her back in the hospital room around 5. She was pretty groggy and very sick from all of the meds that she's had for pain. We sat and held her hand, fanned her and used lots of peppermint oil in the air to help her tummy.

Throughout the night we tried different pain med combos to try and help her without making her so sick like the morphine does. Around midnight she received a pain med that made her really scared, loopy and not herself at all. She kept feeling like she couldn't breathe and was choking, poor thing. She ended up kicking out part of her foley catheter during one of her choking episodes so the nurse just removed it. She was able to sleep for 45min or so at a time after about 1am and is getting by on just Tylenol and Toredol (sp?) which is like super iv motrin the nurse said. It's pretty amazing to see her off of all narcotics 2 days after open heart surgery. We are starting some oxycodone once she eats a bit but she still doesn't feel like doing much eating or drinking- and when she does she's sick to her stomach. We've given her Zofran, Ranitadine and now an anti nausea patch that we're praying does the trick!

This morning she still had her 3 chest tubes in which help drain fluid from surgery. These are under her skin 3-4 inches deep and make it very hard to move or breath with out pain. The Dr.'s were pleased with how little they were draining and gave the order to pull out the middle tube which is the biggest and most rigid/painful. In addition to that, they wanted to pull her arterial line, pacer wires (2 sets of long wires going through her abdomen to her heart in case she needed externally paced) and some bandages off. Teag was feeling really sick all morning but they wanted to get those lines/tubes out so we gave her a bit of versed and fentanyl (short acting 15min dose) and helped our sweet girl through some of the worst pain she's probably ever experienced... Everyone had told us that the chest tube removal is probably the worst part of heart surgery with older kids/adults and they were right. Seeing 4 inches of tubing pulled out of her and wires, large art. lines while she was awake and aware was horrible but we're praying that she'll feel better with a bit more freedom to move and also less pain from that center tube. She had me pray with her during the procedure and the nurses let us stand bedside and hold her hand while they stitched her tummy closed where the tube was. She is the toughest little girl I know and hopefully with the bit of versed she had, she won't remember those painful moments.

After that, she was really sick to her stomach again and also has a lot of congestion in her throat from being intubated two days in a row. Trent and I have not left her bedside all morning just helping her with everything. We have a good system when she feels sick with Trent fanning her with a plastic folder that has peppermint oil on it, then I get her a cold cloth and we pray with her and reassure her that she's ok. This combo really helps calm her and encourages her to sleep... She is still very oxygen dependent and when she takes off her mask, she de-sats into the 40s/50s pretty quickly. This is scary to watch as well and dangerous for her. The Dr.'s/nurses are going to help us get her sitting up and maybe even trying to walk later today so that her lungs can clear out and she can breath better.

If she can try and do those things, the plan is to move her out of the ICU by later this afternoon and into a regular hospital room on the floor. We don't anticipate leaving anytime soon, but this is one step closer to going home. Please pray for her poor tummy, breathing and pain. It's a delicate balance to help her drink/eat, not throw up and not be in too much pain. Baby steps for the next few days but moving in the right direction!

Here's T after her lines/tubes were pulled out. You can see her left and right chest tubes are still in place but there's a bandage where they removed and stitched the center one.

 Sweet girl praying that she won't throw up... She's so faithful and is comforted each time we pray with her. The beautiful part is that every time we pray (usually for no throwing up), she doesn't and is able to rest! We tell her that God is taking such good care of her- and he is! I can't wait for her to find some longer lasting relief and get some quality sleep.