Day 18: Recovery

Back to square one.

That's where I thought we were last night, and if you could have seen the commotion in her PICU room, you would have agreed. Natalie was really struggling, and her doctor was very close to putting her back on the high frequency ventilator. Something happened, though...and Little Miss Natalie pulled through.

While it took a lot of work from her doctor and nurses to get her blood pressure, temperature, and sats back up last night, Natalie responded to the support. It's almost as though yesterday never happened! She's back near where she was prior to surgery.

Over night, she started to show she was in a lot of pain, which is understandable, considering the pancreatitis and the surgery. Since she's been on quite a bit of morphine, she had built up somewhat of a tolerance to it. So when she started to show some pain last night, they really had to bump up her dosage of morphine to help her get comfortable. Her heart rate started to spike, because she was obviously dealing with some pain.

This afternoon, she looks comfortable, is breathing well, and she's starting to get rid of some of the fluids she took in last night to help her blood pressure.

Snuggled in with her stuffed animals this afternoon

So, what caused the pancreatitis? That's the mystery her doctors are trying to solve. One theory is an anti-seizure medication she's been on since June, called Depakote. She switched to this medication because she had started to have some really big breakthrough seizures. Depakote seemed to be the answer, because we haven't seen any seizures since. It can cause pancreatitis, though, so to be on the safe side, her doctors are weaning her off of it, and starting a new medication.

Also, now that she has a G-tube, we might also start her on something called a ketogenic diet. Click here for a recent CBS News story on this very topic. Natalie can get that nutrition in a special formula that we can put through her G-tube, and hopefully that will help to control her seizures, alongside her other medications.

Yesterday's surgery was really a blessing in disguise. By opening up her stomach, her doctor discovered what could have been a major contributor to her first respiratory failure last week. You may be wondering why it wasn't discovered before. Well, her body was showing signs of inflammation, but because we knew she had inflammation in her lungs, that was what her doctors were treating.

Her lungs eventually got much better, along with the pancreatitis, so it was naturally assumed that her lungs were the single culprit of the inflammation and the illness. Now that we know she had pancreatitis along with the pneumonia, it makes much more sense as to why she had such a horrible run after it seemed like she was doing much better. Had we not done the surgery, we would not be discussing taking away the Depakote. If that's what's causing her problems, we likely would have returned to the hospital weeks from now for more treatment.

Holding on to her kitty :)

We are so excited that Natalie seems to be recovering well today.

Square one? I think not. Day 18 is a good one.