March 17, 2009 - Happy St. Patricks Day

David here at 7:00pm on Tuesday. Caden Marshall is doing good today and is progressing nicely. This is great news as we had a bit of a scare after the post we put up yesterday.

Caden Marshall was not getting enough oxygenated blood to his lungs at one point yesterday. We got the news that Caden Marshall’s levels started to drop about 2 hours after surgery. Dr. Tweddell and team were still at the hospital so they asked us to leave and turned the PICU into the Operating Room. Dr. Tweddell and team went back into the chest cavity to “explore”. They found the source of the problem which was a leaky artery which was quickly corrected with a formula they use to clot the blood on the outside of the artery. This type of clotting is done purposely to seal sutured areas. His level changed from the mid 60’s to the preferred 80’s. We were informed there should be no long term effect due to the reduced oxygenation levels. Right now there is some fluid on the lungs that is causing a bit of concern but they are hoping to cure that through meds.

Melissa and I were blessed to have G-ma and G-pa Monroe, G-ma and G-pa Smith as well as Aunts Cheryl and Kristen and Uncles Tommy and Keith here supporting us all day yesterday. It was a very long and stressful day made as comfortable as it could have been surrounded by the love of our family. We were also very happy to receive calls from Uncle Eric and Aunt Janelle checking on us from Arizona.

Today Caden Marshall is resting peacefully. Melissa was happy to see that they do oral treatments on Caden with her breast milk. He is on a number of medications to control many different things. One of the medications they are reducing right now is the amount of vecuronium. Vercuronium restricts Cadens body from making any movement. The reduction will allow Caden to wiggle his toes (just tested and it is working) and fingers. This is a nice treat for us to see him respond to our touch just one day after surgery. They will not take Caden completely off this medication because he could be pulling out his lines and such if they did. We are still in a very critical time, Melissa and I understand this yet we continue to be encouraged and hopeful.

Melissa and I received some very good advice from a family that, a couple of years ago, walked the same path with their son. Braden’s parents suggested that we that we celebrate each little win along the way, instead of looking at the 3 stage process as a whole. We loved this advice and are very appreciative of their continued support. We have already celebrated a successful Norwood Procedure and God willing will celebrate tonight - one full day on his road to recovery. Now the reason we chose the above picture.

We know each of you are supporting us and wear some of our emotions with us. With that in mind we want to make sure you can continue to celebrate each win with us. Melissa and I will use the above picture as a baseline. A threshold of which to start the tracking of progress that Caden makes to his discharge. This picture was taken last night (we made sure it was not too graphic) and shows most of the machines, and such, Caden Marshall is hooked up to. We will return to pictures like this to show how the machines and medications disappear as he continues to improve.

Current machine count: 7 Medications, 5 Saline flushes, 4 Blood products. Let’s pray they disappear due to positive progress (we aren’t counting monitors).