Post Surgery Day 8

I know some of you have been following this blog daily to keep up with the latest on Ellie.  Like I've said before, no news is good news.  Hence, no post for yesterday.  Yesterday was a pretty calm day for Ellie.  I think things have really gone well since they put her on the Flolan med which is, as the pulmonary specialist put it, the big guns.  Ellie's bleeding from her chest tube subsided, the fluid around her lungs looks like it is decreasing, she hasn't had a big hypertensive crisis since Tuesday, swelling is decreasing, feedings are increasing at 1 ml every 4 hours (she's getting almost nothing!), and overall things are progressing.

Today is the beginning of the weaning process since there have been no other complications for a couple of days.  The nurse told Mike that Ellie is on 15 constant medications and another 6 that they give to her as needed. They have turned the nitric oxide down from 20 to 10 and will go down every 6 hours so if all goes well she could be off of it by tomorrow night.  The weaning process is going to be long and slow and since Ellie has been on so many sedation and pain meds for such a long period of time she might go through withdrawals.  They are going to start ativan and methadone through her feeding tube to help wean her off the sedatives and pain meds.  Since being off the paralytic earlier today, we have seen quite a lot of movement out of her which is nice to see but at the same time, they don't want her to be too active and make things get out of control.  She really wants to come out and play, or at least be rid of all the tubes and get out of the hospital.  Ellie is a very touchy baby and I'm sure she just wanted to reach out and stroke our cheeks like she usually does.  All of her other numbers have been looking great!  Fingers crossed...