What a crazy ride!

After moving Julia to Primary Children’s, the last few days have been fairly stable for her.  For Valentines day, Erin spent it with Julia, and I took out my other 4 valentines out for dinner. (They chose McDonalds and play dough ice cream )  Every day we have called the NICU and Erin has gone to Salt Lake to spend time with her.  It is a constant balancing act for the nurses and doctors as they work to keep all of her vital signs and levels in order.  By today, we thought we had started to have a few days of being stable with Julia.  (Stable being a relative term as she is still in critical condition.  Her lungs are still in bad shape and she’s fighting a fungal infection.)  

Now for the crazy part of the ride.  I got a call from the NICU just after 3pm today saying that they had done an ultrasound of her abdomen, as it was still quite large, and found that she had stool outside of her intestines.  So basically the original concern from Saturday of a perforated intestine was accurate.   This meant that she had to have surgery to clean it out and fix the hole in her intestine.  Erin and I zipped down to Primary Children's as quickly as we could to be there for her surgery. 

With her condition, everything is critical and as the surgeon put it, “lethal”.  So we were very concerned with how she would handle the surgery.  The surgery went smoothly and Julia handled it well with good vital signs throughout the procedure.  What they found is that there was a “blow out” in a section of her small intestine.  There was also a good amount of stool and milk in her abdomen.  The surgeon cleaned everything out and now has a stoma, which is basically the bad part of her intestine on the outside of her tummy.  It’s kind of weird to see, but that is the best way to handle what she has. 

Now she is back to the routine of watching her vitals and trying to keep everything right where is should be.   Besides being way to early, she has 3 major issues.  1. Her lungs are in bad shape. 2. She has a fungal infection that will take 4 weeks min to get rid of. 3 She has a profusion in her intestine, which has now been operated on.  Everyday could mean something else.

We hope and pray that she will get stronger and overcome these issues.  We are so grateful to all of our friends and neighbor for their help, as well as the great Nurses at McKay Dee that we no longer see.