The new day

Oh, how I love knowing that we have new day awaiting us each morning. A chance to see amazing things take place. I sit through the nights and long for the daylight to come through our windows here in the PICU.

All of the effort(the girls worked tirelessly for Ash) last night has yielded promising results. This mornings x-ray has shown that the fluid has been drained from the left lung and the lobes have been re inflated. She is now moving air through the lung. The right lung still struggles with the upper lobe and we are continuing to work on it every two hours round the clock. If the lobe does not open then our surgeon feels it is very necessary to do a bronchoscopy of the lung in an attempt to get it opened and functioning again. I will try and explain what happened to Ash last night as I understand it.

Around 5 p.m. we changed Ashley' position slightly. We periodically adjust her arms and legs, hand and feet, lift a shoulder, prop her up so that we can avoid sore spots on her body. Within 15 minutes of this particular position change Ashley's monitors began to change. She was no longer able to maintain an appropritate oxygen level. We worked for quite a while trying to bag her and suction her breathing tube but were never able to make an impact. Things were becoming very frightening because her oxygen level was staying low for too long. The doctor who had just come on shift ordered a chest x-ray and the image we saw projected on the screen was very alarming. Apparently when Ashley was shifted a mucus plug of some type dislodged and changed position inside of her lungs allowing the fluid that had built up to make a shift as well. The weight and the shift of this fluid instantly caused her left lung to become unusable. She was moving no air through it and it had compromised her ability to breathe greatly. The decision was made to insert a chest tube and attempt to remove the weight of the fluid from her lung. Then the schedule for therapy was decided on and our nurses and RTs went to work.

This morning we have not been able to make any forward progress on weaning her ventilator support. Moving things to0 quickly could be dangerous and so we are only working on reducing the amount of oxygen the vent is giving to her. We have to be careful not cause oxygen toxicity to Ash and leaving her vent at 100% oxygen support would cause this to happen. So the progress we have made to this point is that her oxygen is down to 65% and she is maintaining her saturations.

Ashley Kate's lungs are very sick. No one knows why or how this has happened and we may never find the answer. The goal of our transplant team is to allow her lungs to heal. It may happen slowly or she could amaze us all and turn around quickly. We really don't know at this time. The best that can be done for Ash at this time is to just support her systems, and we are doing that. To this point we have no indication that her organs have been compromised or damaged in any way. We have actually started dripping tube feeds into her bowel to allow it to begin waking up again. So far this is going well. Allie asks me everyday when Ash will wake up. I wish I had the answers to give her. For now it is best not allow that to take place. She is safer and much more comfortable in the state that she is in. As much as my heart is breaking over her "absence" from us I am so thankful we have the ability to allow her to "check out" during this illness. It truly is a miracle to watch. Once the drugs are are tapered off and Ash is in a safe place she will slowly begin to move and open her eyes and come back to us. Someday. Just not today.

Until then I truly covet your prayers for our family. She has a daddy, a brother, and a sister at home who are hurting for her and who long for her to wake up, wave bye bye and head for Texas. Trish


Just a quick note of Thanks to Stephanie and Wayne for the diet coke delivery. It brought a smile to my face. Thank you to Jill and her beautiful family for the care package. Only the Lord new the things I was longing for and He allowed you to provide them unknowingly. Simply amazing! To Em, and Lou Ann, and Joan your friendship during these last few days has meant so much and I love you girls for offering it.