Our beautiful daughter Jessica was born in September 2011 with a severe heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. This was diagnosed at her 20 week scan and we were initially told that she was unlikely to be suitable for surgery. However, a pioneering in-utero operation at 28 weeks to enlarge a hole in her atrial septum was carried out and she was able to make it to term and get through her first open-heart surgery at just eight hours old. Jessica underwent five more surgeries during her life. Her final surgery - the Fontan procedure - took place in December 2017. She initially made a good recovery but sadly passed away suddenly on 14th April 2018 at the age of 6. This is the story of a little girl whose half a heart overflowed with love. She was, and will forever be, our little miracle and brought joy to all who knew her.

Wednesday, 25 April 2012

Going back up to Ocean Ward

Jessica had a very settled night and seemed to be suffering less with the morphine withdrawal. After the morning round, the plan was for Jessica to stay on PICU for another 24 hours as she needed to either be off the optiflow oxygen or paraflu negative in order to go up to Ocean Ward. She had another ultrasound in the morning to check the fluid around her lung and this showed that there was no longer any significant amount of fluid which was very encouraging.


By the afternoon, her latest sample had come back as negative for parainfluenza so this has finally gone and she had also managed to come off the optiflow and back on to normal oxygen.  We hadn’t expected that both the aims from the morning would have been achieved so soon and that we would be ready to go to Ocean Ward quite so quickly!  

By the time we transferred up to Ocean Ward in the evening, Jessica had amazed us once again by managing to achieve sats in the high 80s without any extra oxygen being needed!  She is starting to take the Monogen by bottle again and her antibiotics have also finished today as well so she has made quite a lot of progress in one day – praise God!

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2 comments:

  1. elizabethinchurch26 April 2012 at 00:13

    Thank God yes, know how much you are all loved. And what a superb patient Jessica is - good girl! She looks as if she's sleeping more restfully now she's parainfluenza free and promoted back to Ocean Ward.

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  2. J. Ringer26 April 2012 at 00:46

    She's such a little trooper, you all are. Thank you so much for keeping us updated and letting us know how she's doing:)

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