A New Journey Begins....

(Just FYI, this is Brad - Lisa asked me to do the post today)

Today we tried one final time to take Eden's ventilator tube out. She did well for about 2 hours and then it got worse from there. By the time four hours passed she was working too hard to breath and she suffered a few pretty massive drops in heart rate and oxygen rate. She is okay and resting now as we wait to transfer her to the University of New Mexico Hospital on Monday to work with an ear, nose, and throat doctor.

The inbutation (putting the tube back in her lungs) was bumpy. It was a very saddening and stressful experience. Eden was pale white and fighting for air. They had to do chest compressions as her heart rate went dangerously low. Watching it was truly unbearable--excruciating. This was the third time and I can't describe how badly it hurts to watch. I really wish we could just wake up six months from now and everything will have passed by.

She has been intubated 6 times since she was born, and most of the attempts were repeated multiple times in each intubation. This, together with the pretty traumatic emergency intubation in early July, has likely done some damage to her airway. The ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doctor will do an evaluation and we'll go from there. From what we can tell, it's a throat issue, not a lung issue--which is much easier to deal with.

The good news is that we at least have the peace of knowing some of the next steps, and we feel blessed to have our cute little girl with us.

Someday, just someday, I will sit my little girl down when she's five or six and making a mess or being disobedient and tell her, "You know, back in the day you were a real troublemaker..."


P.S. In other good news, this whole premature thing spared me from the birthing class and "Miracle of Life" video we were supposed to attend this weekend. You see, there's always a silver lining!