Today has been a very rough day. It started out when April woke me up and needed help to the bathroom because the nurse never showed up after she was called. Then I received a phone call from Ellie's doctor. Ellie had a very bad morning. They were very close to needing to put her on a heart and lung bypass machine called an ECMO. They made some adjustments to the method of treatment and she started doing better. Then tonight she took a turn for the worse and they had to change her treatment again and anticipated doing the ECMO and anticipated having to do emergency lung surgery. Fortunately, the change in treatment methods did the trick. They changed her from an oscillating ventilator back to a regular ventilator on a bivent setting, they increased the sedation and increased some other medicines. One of the issues was that with the increased sedation she couldn't empty her blatter. This was causing her blatter to swell and push up into her lung making it harder for her lung to breathe.
April was discharged tonight from the hospital about 6:00 pm! Boy were we happy about that!! She is doing pretty good but is still very uncomfortable. I took her back to our apartment, got a shower, had some good greasy non-hospital food and went back to Children's to spend the night with my baby girl. I was standing by Ellie's bed tonight when her surgeon walked up to me. It was around 11:30 pm when asked him what he was doing here so late. His response was "I'm here to make sure Ellie is doing ok." AWESOME!! He hung around the hospital tonight specifically to check on Ellie. He told me that he had assembled a team to make sure that if Ellie needed surgery that all the right people were here and ready. I can't begin to say how wonderful it is to know that people care that much. I also found out that the surgeon was sitting at Ellie's bedside this morning for about an hour just watching her. There is no doubt in our minds that he made the right decision to relocate to Cincy and allow our daughter to be treated by Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
April and I are so thankful for the wonderful nurses and doctors that took care of April and Ellie (and me) this week. A few of the nurses made it a point to track us down after we had left there department.....and they are now following this blog. Thank you all so much! Please know that the care and compassion you showed for us will never be forgotten!
This has been a very rough week for April, Ellie and I and we would appreciate the continued prayers. Without the Holy Spirits presence this week, I don't know how we could have got through this. People say that things happen for a reason or that God is using us for a certain purpose. I'm not sure why we have been chosen to have our lives turned upside down but please continue to pray so I can take my wife, my baby girl and my dog and move back home to Indiana! Thank you all for keeping up with our journey! We truly appreciate it!
Matt (Ellie's daddy)
Mommy & Daddy's precious baby girl
