Bumpy Road Continued

Mom finally got released at 7:00 tonight.  She is ready for, hopefully better nights rest in a normal bed.  It was hard leaving the hospital knowing we wouldn't be a short walk away from our little girl anymore but we know she is in good hands and they are doing everything for her.  There is no better place for her to be right now.  
Brenya is stable and making very slow progress.  She is taking little steps in the right direction. They decreased some of the medication she is on and she has responded well.  She also has  started producing more urine and her swelling is starting to go down.  The nurse tonight said that she was able to hear her heat beat through her chest, which she could not do yesterday because of the amount of swelling.  The ECMO is what caused the swelling.  Her body sees the ECMO as foreign so her immune system reacts causing the large amount of swelling.  Unfortunately, this is a case where her good immune system is making things a little harder instead of helping.  Right now, we just need to wait for her body to adjust and for the swelling to go down before we can go onto the next step.  I should probably explain a little about ECMO and why it's so important.  ECMO is basically a lung or heart bypass.  The pump blood out of her body, circulate it through the machine to oxygenate it then put it back into her body.  This helps in two ways.  First, it gives her the oxygen she can't get on her own because of her underdeveloped lungs.  Second, it lets the heart relax because it doesn't have to pump as hard since it's not trying to get blood though restricted lungs.  Now that these two things have been taken care of, her body can focus on fixing the hypertension in her lungs.  So the steps for right now are to wait for the swelling to finish going down, then her body can resolve the hypertension.  When that's done, the doctors can slowly take her off ECMO.  Once she is off, then they can finally do surgery to fix the hernia.  It's a long and tough road, but she is a strong fighter and we are all being very patient to let her body do what it needs to do.