Thursday, March 18, 2010

UPDATE: Day 2 After Surgery


Another one of Jaidy's posters: "For YOU created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb."
Psalm 139:13


"God Bless Her Little Heart."


So I woke up this morning to a loud alarm indicating Jaida's blood pressure was 110 and her heart rate was reading 220 bpm. The nurses and doctors were quite concerned because they could not really indicate what was causing that to happen. They gave her aa echo which idicated that the fluid around her right lung had gone away (thank God!) and her blood gases were all beautiful! (If some kind of infection were occuring or something abnormal was happening internally, the bgas would pick that up) Donna, Jaida's morning PICU nurse, completely took her off of the epi (which is the chemical your body makes when you are scared) and gave her several other meds to get her stats back to normal. Finally the b/p went to normal and so did her heart rate. The xray tech came in and gave her an xray (still haven't gotten the results of those). Towards the later end of the night her b/p was extremely low due to the amount of meds given throughout the day. I asked the physician on this week why her blood pressure was so low (for about 11 hours and still as i'm typing it's been in the high forties, low fifties) and he suspected it was because the blood vessels were dilating. Now they have her back on the epi and they are actually decreasing the sedation meds (b/c our b/p drops when we get sleepy) so hopefully that will work. It's a lot more difficult when she is opening her eyes and actually focusing on me, and I can't do anything to help her.. =( Also, they still have not taken out the breathing tube simply because the fluxuation of her blood pressure.. hopefully tomorrow things will turn around. It just seems like Jaidy isn't wanting to get better as fast as mommy wants her too. I'll update sometime tomorrow or if anything else changes tonight. Keep the prayers coming, they work!

Mommy being silly


Beautiful Tata

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About Me

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My name is Brandi and my darling honey and I have been together a little over four years now. Four months ago I gave birth to our first daughter, Jaida. This little girl is the most amazing Angel that one could imagine. God has truly blessed us in several aspects! I decided to start this blog in order to share Jaida's heart journey with family and friends near and far. Our darling daughter Jaida was born with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot and will be undergoing open heart surgery on March the 16th. My hope is that one day perhaps another heart mom will come across my blog as I have come across several myself, and find that my experiences can possibly help them through their own. Having a child with a heart condition can be awfully challenging mentally, physically and emotionally but EVERYTHING is possible through the hands of GOD.

About Jaida's Special Heart

My daughter was prenatally diagnosed with a Congenital Heart defect (CHD) called Tetralogy of Fallot when I was 22 weeks pregnant. This specific defect is made up of four different issues. The first issue is the ventricular septal defect (VSD) which is a hole between the ventricles. In Jaida's case, she had three large holes (one they did not know about until she was in the operating room) all of which had to be patched. The next issue is obstruction from the right ventricle to the lungs (pulmonary stenosis). Jaida's aorta also lay directly over the VSD which causes thickened muscle in that region that needs to be removed. Lastly, in Jaida's case, the pulmonary valve was extremely small for her gestational age. Unfortunately, due to its cartiledge-like texture, it could not be saved and was removed completely during surgery. Many children can go several years without needing a valve.. some can live life forever without one (most will need one). However, medical professionals are working on a new, less invasive approach to valve replacements. Instead of re-opening the chest cavity between the breastbone, researchers are trying catheterization (a tube placed inside of the vein & artery in the groin that lead up to the heart). I know that before the diagnosis of my daughter's condition, I had no idea about heart disease whatsoever. The bad thing is most people don't know anything about CHD unless they know someone who has it, or it happens to them or their child. Because of this, heart disease research is being poorly funded. In order to research trials and studies for less invasive life-saving surgery for children and families with CHD, it is imperative that more people familiarize themselves with this disease. This type of funding allows doctors to save millions of lives every year. So I encourage you to get involved and to get educated, because this disease is extremely serious and a lot more common than you may think.



Jaida's Story