Recovery

I'm so thankful to say we are finally to the point of recovery! Mya has been doing pretty good, over night and today her blood pressure and temperature have gone up and down a bit, but that seems to be the only thing her nurse is consistently managing. They're weaning her from the paralytic (the medication that keeps her from moving), so in the next day or so, they'll be restraining her arms so she won't pull the breathing tube out herself. She still has a lot of tubes etc. the first one to go will probably be the drainage tube & pacemaker wires from her heart area, I'm anxious to get some of the stuff off of her to make her look more normal. I'm also looking forward to her really waking up, it's been so long since she's been coherent! At this point though, she just needs time to get her through. Resting and recovering is the key. The nurse is just now giving her nutrition via IV again, so we've got a ways to go until she's feeding through her tummy. Here is a photo of her incision, they've done a great job, especially knowing that they had to re-open her chest to pump her heart again. I think the scar on her neck where the ECMO tubes were will be worse than her surgery scar. For some reason I can't turn this picture correctly in blogger... sorry for the funny direction. We're down to one nurse and she has been leaving the room a lot more frequently to help other nurses. I love needing less care! It's so nice not to be the priority emergency situation any more. We have a neighbor boy in the ICU who is also recovering from some kind of heart surgery too, he was just wheeled in this morning. Rob & I have both been able to take naps today, the knot from my stomach is finally gone. It's so nice to be able to relax a bit. I'm pretty sure we'll have less free time when she wakes up. That's when the parent-care job gets to be more demanding. I'll take it! I'm so incredibly thankful to have our daughter!