The end of day one

Well, this is the end of our first full day in ICU, still quite hard to wrap our mind around it all. To give you a brief summary of what we are dealing with as the day comes to a close...

Maggie fought quite hard with her sedation today. I think we might have been the cause for the some of the excitement. I was not aware that it is not good for her to be aroused, so when Maggie became alert, my sister and I talked with her a little bit. She opened her eyes and nodded her head to some questions that we were asking. When she became a bit more conscious, her reflex jumped in and she began coughing and fighting the ventilator. This made her oxygen levels plummet many times over. They struggled with this all day, and eventually had to put her on 100% oxygen (where as earlier in the morning she had been at 45%).

One course of action they took was to increase her dose of Versed (sedative), and give her several boluses of Fentanyl (pain med). This allowed her oxygen saturation to be maintained in the low 90's for awhile, however her respiratory rate was still in the 50's, which meant that Maggie was still trying to breath around the respirator. They finally decided to put Maggie back on the paralysis medicine to see if that would calm her, and it appears to be working. Her respiratory rate is in the upper 20's (which is normal for her age) and they have been able to come down on her oxygen to about 80%.

As I've been typing this though, they have once again changed things on us. Maggie's not responding as well on her oxygen saturation, so they are once again going up on her oxygen to 100%. Her blood pressure has also dropped some so they are going to give her a bolus of fluids in hope that this will bring her pressure up. If not, they will add another blood pressure medicine to her already large group of meds.

Maggie has had a fever much of the day. She has been on a cooling blanket and Tylenol around the clock and even has spiked during one of the doses. Her last temperature was around 8:00 and it is only now slowing going down to from about 102.7 to 99.7. While we don't believe she is done fevering, one good sign is that her body is responding to the infection and that Tylenol can still bring it down, though sometimes it takes a couple of hours.

So that's kind of where we stand. We have learned things can change in a minute. And we have observed just that. Though Maggie struggled much of the day with her sedation, I think it means that she has got fight in her. This girl is a tough one and it shows as they had to continue to increase her sedative to calm her down. It finally to paralyzing her to get her to respond the way they wanted. We just pray she uses that fight to get through this.

While we have given you mostly medical jargon today, I do want to say how tough this has been for us. We have been scared and worried for her as the doctors are seeing her as critical. We have learned in the process of treating cancer that infections sometimes are more deadly than the cancer, and that is what scares us most. We have become very knowledgeable about our situation and sometimes I think too much knowledge can be dangerous. It definitely has been on our psyche. I think with all of this, the hardest thing is that we can't hold her. That has always been my way of comforting Maggie and I no longer can do this. I just pray we get that chance once again. There are so many more things we want to be able to do with her.

Please continue to pray with fervor that the antibiotics will start kicking in and begin to heal her lungs. Pray that she will stabilize on her oxygen, respiration, and blood pressure so that she can get to the point that they can wean her down. Above all else, please pray for healing and a cure for a beautiful little girl. We love her more than anything else and want to be able to celebrate her life with her for years and years.