PICU Day 3

Today was a good day - Micaelyn is off the ventilator!  After they took out the breathing tube along with her NG tube and catheter she was quite difficult to deal with.  She was having withdrawal symptoms from all the drugs she had been on to try to sedate her.  She was thrashing about wildly and seemed very out of control of herself.  I finally got her settled down enough to rest for a bit.  Later in the day they started letting her drink some apple juice.  She managed to drink quite a bit but ended up throwing it all up.  After that she was really quite miserable.  She got very chilled and was shaking terribly.  I got her dressed in some warm pajamas and got her settled down into a very good sleep.  She awoke again a little after 8pm.  She got to enjoy the rest of the evening visiting with Mommy, Daddy, Caleb, Christina, Aaron, and Malachi (Joshua stayed in the waiting room) as well as some friends from church (and earlier in the day she got to see my mom as well).  It was obvious she enjoyed all the attention as well as her new Barbies and other presents.  I managed to get her to eat a small amount of jello before she started getting super agitated and restless.  She started complaining a lot about her head hurting and was tossing and turning very roughly, crying, moaning, screaming, etc.  She was making sure to let everyone know just how miserable she was!  Eventually I got her settled into sleep for the night.

We are very hopeful she will be able to come home tomorrow.  She kept saying repeatedly "I wanna go home."  She also kept reaching for me, and even when I was sitting right next to her petting her she would often reach both arms up and pull me to her.  Sometimes she would reach up to pet my face.  She definitely wanted me to stay very close.  She is such a precious little angel!

Seeing the last of this mess!

We were so happy to finally get her free of all the tubes.  We also were simply amazed to see her closing her mouth!  Before the surgery she almost never closed her mouth except to swallow.  We waited over a year to do this surgery (tongue reduction) not only to allow her to attach to us and overcome the trauma of leaving her foster family/culture/language/etc. but also to make sure she really needed the surgery.  There were a number of reasons we came to know for certain she needed the surgery (e.g. she was developing a significant underbite as her lower jaw kept growing forward to make room for her enlarged tongue) but one of them was the fact that she never closed her mouth.  To see her able to keep her mouth closed is simply amazing!

This is an example of how she usually kept her mouth open before the surgery.  Very often her tongue would actually protrude from her mouth, but even when she kept her tongue in her mouth she still didn't keep it closed because he mouth was just so full of tongue.

Taking a nap after she threw up all her juice.  Her eyelids got very red and swollen along with some other parts of her face (another side effect of the drugs).

Sleeping for hopefully her last night in the PICU!  So amazing to see her mouth closed!

For comparison purposes this is a picture of her sleeping before the surgery.  Her mouth was never more closed than this.