We are back to weekdays, so there are a lot more people around and more going on in general. The team did a mini trial this morning and another longer trial of Ruby's heart after lunch and both went well. Dr Horne said that they are seeing a significant improvement over yesterday, which is what we like to hear. She still needs to continue improving before they can take her off the ECMO machine. The pressures in her heart and lungs still need to come down a bit more before it would be viable for her to be off all together. So they have another increase in medication to bring down her pulmonary pressures, and then hopefully tomorrow things will be looking even better.
Otherwise her cranial ultrasounds have been looking good and she is much less puffy than she was yesterday and the day before that. They have been making an effort to bring her fluid levels down which should help decrease the pressure in her lungs and around her heart.
They've taken off a few of her sedatives and paralytics so that she can move a little bit to get some of that lymph flowing, so we get a bit of response when we hold her hand now, rather than her being completely limp which is nice! She hasn't woken up or anything and has lots of meds to keep her pain free. She also doesn't have any bed sores or anything which is good. They've been moving her from side to back to side and have her on a pressure free mattress. I tried to bathe her head today to get some of the ultrasound gel out of her hair... I was only slightly successful, but it was nice to try to do something for her all the same.
So... to sum up, she is still making progress, and we still need to keep waiting and hoping things continue to improve.
