Extubation Day – Fail

So… we are reintubated. Lasted almost 8 hours. She’d done a little worse throughout the day, having small episodes of her O2 sats getting too low, and one side of her lungs sounding a little diminished. They’d done a couple kinds of breathing treatments to help, but they didn’t. Her first two blood gas numbers came back great, the 3rd came back horrible and so we had to reintubate immediately to prevent having to do one in an emergency. (last time we reintubated was an emergency and she coded and needed chest compressions… thankfully it didn’t get to that this time.)

I got to hold her for about 10 minutes before she started to desat, and again, right before they intubated, I helped myself and held her without asking for a few seconds… but her body was pretty limp because she was so exhausted from the work of breathing.

I’m just…. here. And just very sad. And frustrated. And a wee bit deflated.

Part of me wants to say a really big I TOLD YOU SO, as I really didn’t feel that she was ready. A part of me, maybe the pessimistic part, or maybe it was the Mommy part, knew that this wasn’t going to be “the time” for her to stay extubated. Oh, I wanted it to be. REALLY badly. But it’d only been a good day or so of doing well on longer CPAP trials while on the vent. I really thought she needed more exercize.

They also wanted to extubate her to minimal O2 settings (instead of a CPAP machine) and I really didn’t like that idea since she’d done so badly on it before. Maybe it was just my jaded thinking from all her previous fails. But the Doctor’s thinking was, with her new heart anatomy, she’d do awesome this time.

Obviously that didn’t happen.

So now we are back to starting from scratch. Rechecking everything. Trying to figure out how to get her off the ventilator. I’m just really tired. I really really am.

But then… another little baby here didn’t make it today. My heart is breaking for his parents. On one hand, I am so very thankful my Annabelle is still here. But on the other, it scares me like crazy. Would God make us go through this process for all this time and still take our Annabelle away? The answer, of course, is a resounding maybe.

So, I pray. I beg God. I make it one more day… a day at a time. God knows and He hears. There is a reason for this too. I’m choosing to be okay with not knowing what that reason is.

Here are a few pics from the brief shining moments of our day.