After the Storm

Day 1

Everything went extremely well today. We feel so grateful. We have no doubt that there was divine intervention, and that all of the prayers and fasting and love from everyone has helped this miracle to be. They only placed one of the VEPTRs instead of two, because the time that she was under anesthesia was getting to be too long for her little body. She also didn't have a lot of muscle and skin on the one side of her ribs to work with, so Dr. Campbell wants to put it in later when she has a little more meat on her. He didn't seem too concerned about this for now and said that we definitely have the hardest part out of the way. He actually was able to expand the rib cage today, which allows for more lung expansion, but said that we have to wait for the lungs to grow and the muscles to strengthen before we will notice a lot of change. So many things can go wrong with this procedure, but none of them did, so we are very fortunate. She has been in a lot of pain and discomfort in the moments when she wakes up, but the medication is helping somewhat. The hardest part is that we can't pick her up because of the soreness in her back, so it's overwhelming to watch her suffer and not be able to comfort her in the way she is used to. The first few days are rough, but hopefully she will be feeling better soon. She may even be ready to go home in a week, but we will see. We can't believe how supportive everyone has been. Thank you. We love you all.