Love/Hate Relationship

Note: This was the fifth update I made to Addison's CarePages site. I remember sitting and watching the numbers on this machine late into the night. Things seemed OK, so around 9:30 or so, I went down the hall to get a little bit of sleep. A couple of hours later Scott said I needed to come back to the room. Things were definitely not OK. An hour or so later, my sweet, beautiful first-born baby was gone.

Posted Mar 25, 2012 12:04pm

I really have a love/hate relationship with the ECMO right now. I love it because it's doing much of the work of Addie's lungs, heart, and kidneys, which allows her to get some much-needed rest. But, because her blood needs to flow freely through the machine, she must receive medicine to thin her blood and reduce clotting. So that means she's going to bleed.

That's where we're at today. The bleeding at the cannula site has increased. Luckily, it's not as bad as it was Friday when doctors had to go back into the site and fix an arterial tear. But, it's worse than it was yesterday, which means she getting more transfusions. Doctors will re-evaluate the situation at 3 p.m.

In addition to that issue, there is additional fluid build-up in Addie's lungs, so today they're doing as much as they can to pull that off. But, here's where it gets tricky. They can't pull it off too fast because her blood pressure will plummet. Not an ideal situation, but that's what we're dealing with.

In times like these, I turn to this site and read the comments to her and play the video clips of her brothers. So please, keep your words and prayers coming.

Thank you!