It takes both rain and sunshine to make a Rainbow

“Necessity never made a good bargain” -- Benjamin Franklin

Today has been a very good day! We trialed off ECMO for the third time today. Andrew's blood gas results looked great for the full three hours that he was off the pump. His blood pressure was a little low but all in all he looked great. We were even sent out of his room so that they could decannulate and take him off the ECMO. In the end, it was decided that a couple more days on the pump could allow for lower ventilator settings (currently maxed out) giving us some room to move once they take the ECMO away. It is amazing knowing for the first time that Andrew could make it without the device that saved his life just three short weeks ago. We are now using the ECMO to allow for improvement more than needing it to stay alive. The next trial is slated for Saturday.

Because they decided to leave Andrew on ECMO for a couple more days, they decided to completely redo the sutures holding the cannulas in place. The leaks around them that have been plaguing us for the last few days seemed to have stopped.

Andrew is still making urine and his kidney numbers are starting to trend down though there is not much of a change that can be seen yet. We hope tomorrow morning we will see some real improvement.

Andrew's stitches from his chest and abdominal incisions were also removed today as well as the other large pleural chest tube. He did need a smaller tube to replace the bigger one but that is still a huge improvement.

All of these changes this afternoon allowed for Andrew to be moved a little more easily and his team took the opportunity to clean him up. Below is a picture following his bath. During the bath it appeared that the new gel mattress his nurse Amy picked up from the intensive care nursery also seemed to help the red places on his back. We don't want them to form into pressure sores.

Today has been a GREAT day and a rainbow among the dark clouds...