Progress for Kate

Well, today was a much easier day for Dad and Mom than yesterday. There were very little surprises and Kate made some steady improvements towards being able to finish the surgery by closing her sternum and sewing her chest back together. Kate started the day off by wiggling her right arm around 7:00am, and by about 9:00am she started to kick her legs a little and move her left arm around. These were great positive signs after what had happened with her heart stopping yesterday. There were potential risks of some damage to her brain during the time that her heart was stopped. But, with the doctors performed CPR (basically massaging her heart) until the heart/lung machine was back up and running. So the moving of her extremities and opening of her eyes is a good sign that there was probably no damage done.

Unfortunately for the nurses, Kate continued to move and kick whenever her sedation medication started to wear off. This caused problems with other things. One of the complications that they are dealing with today is an irregular heart rate. The doctors told us that the incision that they make for the repair of this surgery is right next to the electrical system of the heart. It isn't uncommon for the babies that have this repair to have the right and left side of their heart beating at different rates, obviously causing problems. They fix this with two pace makers and medication until the heart has a chance to heal a little bit and hopefully, things will come back into alignment. She has had periods during the day where her heart rate bounced between over 200+ beats a minute down to around 160 beats a minute This, however, was generally associated with her waking up and wiggling around.

All and all, we are much more relaxed tonight then last night. She seems much more stable and has made it through the first 24-hours, which is critical. Again, we really want to thank everyone that has been keeping Kate in their thoughts and Prayers. We know it is this that is sustaining us as her parents and a HUGE reason Kate is doing as well as she is.