Saturday, October 2, 2010

Another day, more news.

Dear friends,

One more week brings a bevy of news and decisions. Madeline has mostly been doing well, Thursday they pulled her pic line (an IV line that goes up her arm and into her heart) leaving her without any IV lines for the first time in her life since being born. The pic line had required her right arm to be taped to a splint since birth, so the most exciting part was watching Madeline realize she had two of these arm and hand thingies.

They were talking about taking her off the ventilator sometime next week. But then they found something in an x-ray that turned into an MRI and the results were that she has a partially paralyzed diaphragm which is preventing the left lobe of her lung from fully inflating and it is now partially collapsed. No one is sure what caused this but a likely culprit is the ventilator itself.

So a new surgery is required to “tack down” the paralyzed “floppy” part of the diaphragm allowing the rest of the diaphragm to be more effective. They obviously don’t want to do the surgery until she gets bigger, and at the same time they want her off the ventilator. However, the ventilator is necessary until they do the surgery, and so goes most of Madeline’s decisions: “rock” or “hard place”.

Going back to my feeling stranded out on a rock analogy. Now the worst of the storm seems over, the waves are not splashing up on us, the wind has calmed, but still we can’t get off this rock. We just have to stay put for a while. It sometimes feels easier to be in this situation when we’re both feet in living here. The hard part for me is managing a job, being a dad, and keeping house along with being with Madeline at the hospital.

While I’m up on this rock, I still see others everyday, stranded up on their rocks. One of them is 4yr old Anabella Grace. Please pray for her, Anabella is the niece of a friend from Church. She had a couple of seizures and hasn’t really recovered from them. She is now staying here at Childrens in the ICU with a brain infection. Doctors are working hard to figure out what kind of infection it is and how to treat it. Pray for Anabella, pray for her parents.

Please keep praying for Madeline as well. Pray for the doctors meeting on Monday to discuss her again and an upcoming surgery. Pray that her life would be spared and her health continue to improve. Pray for that day, when she will be healthy and home playing with Mom and Dad and her three sisters.

Grace,
Shanker & Lisa.

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