Since we arrived in Denver about a month ago, yesterday takes the cake as the best day since we've been here. We got to hold Kambry and just spend some quality time with her with not many distractions. Kambry tolerated the movement from her bed to our arms wonderfully, which was kind of an unknown on how that would go.
Earlier in the week, the Ronald McDonald House offered us free tickets to the Broncos/Seahawks game, but we were real unsure if that was a good idea or not. The nurses insisted that Kambry was in a good place and that we should get out and do something. So we decided to go, and after sitting in traffic for over an hour and a half we made it to the game. Due to the lighting related weather delays, we only stayed for the first half. We both had fun and felt it was good to get out for a while.
We got up to the hospital at around 8 this morning to find out that Kambry had some extra air in her chest cavity. I guess this was her way of telling us that she's still calling the shots around here! They tried to pull the excess air out using a needle, but decided a chest tube needed to be inserted to completely evacuate the air pocket. Fortunately the procedure went quite well and her oxygen saturation numbers resumed to their previous levels. The bad news is, now she has a small hole in her lung. The Drs are hoping the lung will quickly heal itself. Since this happened, it goes to show how her lungs have a long way to go in their development. She also still has a significant amount of fluid to come off, the nurses estimate that she has an extra 2 lbs of it! This is to be expected after coming off ECMO and not being very mobile. It will slowly come off as she is able to move and more will come off as her lines come out. She has to get extra fluid in her lines to flush her meds but she has started to take some of her meds orally with feeds so the lines should slowly start to disappear as well.
We can tell ourselves time and again how this battle is going to be a long fight with many ups and downs, but it always keeps us uneasy of the outcome. Kambry has proven to us so many times that she is a fighter. We're scared to think of how this big personality will be in her teen years!
Lon