She’s Stable

Mercy is stable. It appears that some intervention changes are moving her in the right direction.

This morning she was struggling to breathe, even with the CPAP. The working hypothesis was that the amount of air in her abdomen prevented her from being able to breathe fully. Her stomach was distended and X-rays showed a disturbing amount of air in her intestines. They looked like balloons - no crinkles.

The docs stopped her feedings to reduce the fullness of her stomach and switched to a ram cannula to reduce the amount of air being forced into her stomach. Since she wasn’t feeding, the docs were able to replace her feeding tube with a suction tube in the hopes that this would relieve some of the air and prevent rupture. As of 6 p.m., these appear to be working.

Her stomach is less distended than it was this morning. X-rays this evening showed some improvement in the amount of air in her intestines. Still balloons, but slightly deflated balloons. Her stomach was slightly smaller as well. Most encouragingly, she’s tolerating her cannula and is saturating well.

For tonight, we’re still in a world where “stable” is about as good as we can hope for, but she is stable. And God's mercies have shown through, from having our favorite ISCU nurse on today to several happily negative tests to the fact that she’s comfortable and is showing gradual improvement.

Thank you for praying, friends. We love you all.