Wednesday, February 16, 2011

One Rough Week!

It's been one rough week for the Tanner family. Ms. Abigail Rose got sick with the fever and bad cough that we were all getting about 2 1/2 weeks ago. Then last Tuesday she came home sick from school with another fever. It turns out she got another flu (the stomach flu) on top of the one she had just had. Over the next few days she just got progressively worse because she didn't feel like eating or drinking. She got really dehydrated, weak, and couldn't sleep because of her horrible cough. It turned into pneumonia and got so bad that she couldn't even walk and started turning blue. Jeni and Mike took her to the emergency room on Saturday morning at Gilbert Mercy Hospital. They did a chest x-ray and because the pneumonia was so bad and her entire body was going into septic shock they decided to air vack her to Phoenix Children's Hospital where she would have a whole team of specialists working on her and a special machine called an oscilator to help her lungs pump oxygen to her body. Because of the septic shock she was going into renal failure and her kidneys were barely functioning.

Abby has been in ICU at the Phoenix Children's Hospital ever since this time. Every day she is getting a little bit better but it is a very slow and trying process. Saturday they hooked her up to the oscilator to get oxygen circulating in her blood. It was a balancing act to keep her heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, and blood toxicity levels at their proper place. They also had to put a tube in her chest to help drain excess fluid. They put several IV's with fluid, pain meds, sedation meds, and antibiotics going in her to try and fight off the secondary infection that she has. The doctors explained that she had a secondary infection on top of the pneumonia that was attacking and filling up her lungs with fluid. Both lungs were completely filled with bacteria and fluid. My mom counted 22 tubes going in and out of her on Sunday morning.

On Monday her chest x-ray really didn't look any better and they were concerned that her kidneys were still not functioning as they should and removing enough fluid from her body so they tried giving her a diuretic. Because the diuretic wasn't working well enough they decided they would put her on dialysis. So a few more tubes later they had the dialysis working well.

Tuesday came and her chest x-ray still showed little improvement. They also had a hard time figuring out how to keep her sedated. Because of the dialysis, the sedation meds were being eliminated from her body too quickly. They finally got that balance out pretty good Tuesday night. That night one of her doctors came in and said she was surprised that Abby's chest x-ray didn't look better and that she had an impression that she needed to check Abby's chest tube and make sure it wasn't blocked. So they checked and sure enough it was blocked and once cleaned and replaced drained a bunch of fluid.

This morning (Wednesday) they were concerned about the gases building up in Abby's body and thought the oscilator tube might be blocked too. They removed the tube for cleaning and put Abby on a machine called a ventilator that is one step in the right direction from the oscilator. It doesn't put quite as much stress on the lungs and work quite so hard. Abby can breathe on her own a little bit better on the ventilator. So far, Abby has been doing so well on the ventilator that they think they will just keep her on that for now. Yay! One more step in the right direction!

This is a very brief overview of the events this last week but I wanted to get things going so we can keep all of you updated. Thank you so much to all of you for your prayers, thoughts, phone calls, concerns, support, food, and help you have all been endlessly giving!! Thank you also for all of your sweet cards and gifts. Abby's room looks amazing and I'm sure she will feel so loved when she wakes up. Jeni, Kim, Mike, and myself will try to keep posting updates and much as we can!

We miss you Abby and hope you get better soon!

4 comments:

suzy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
suzy said...

We send our love, faith, and prayers to all of you! It is hard to believe that sweet girl with so much energy is so sick. We hear from our married children that their little ones always remember Abby in their prayers. They are so concerned for her. The faith of little children is so wonderful.I called all our children again on Monday when I talked to Dennis and she might have to go on dialysis. All of them said they would get off the phone and have prayer with their families for Abby. love you all, Jim and Carla Lindblom and family......sorry this says posted by suzy...I dont know why...

Rachelle said...

Hang in there Abby, we're rooting for you.

Dr.Mark Lee and Staff said...

How thankful we are for the angels a Loving God has sent to the earth for us to know. Abby, I can see, is clearly one of those angels. Our prayers go out to her and to her family.

Post a Comment