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.

Friday 13 April 2012

PICU ups and downs

Jessica had a nice quiet night on PICU staying on the ventilator and everything remained stable overnight. A chest X-ray in the morning showed that her left lung had re-inflated and so she came off the ventilator again and went back on to optiflow oxygen. However, her temperature was a bit high during the morning and she needed to be suctioned fairly frequently as there were quite a lot of secretions on her chest and so a sample was sent off to the lab to check for infection, although in the meantime, Jessica was already on antibiotics.

The sample came back positive for paraflu, a cold/flu-type virus, which we suspect was shared by Louise who has had a fairly heavy cold over the last week or so. Thankfully though, Jessica’s temperature has now come back down and whilst she still needs to have regular suctioning to remove the secretions, she doesn’t seem to be too unwell as a result of this and hopefully this will continue to be the case. It did mean that we had a little move across PICU into a single bay in the corner though.

Jessica has also had one of her chest drains removed today and had some time out of the cot having a lovely cuddle with Mummy which was great. She has been a little more awake today and starting to show a little interest in what is going on around her so seems to be feeling a little better than she has been. She is also off the morphine and seems much more settled generally.

2 comments:

  1. I'm just back from a conference and caught up with your latest adventures on Ocean Ward and PICU since the operation. Jessica's Panda-eyes certainly made the point that she was troubled... I hope you've had more of a rest these past 24 hours.Love and prayers from Dorset. Elizabeth

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  2. Yes thank you - trying hard to make sure we rest when we can and take time to go and eat properly - makes it a little easier! x

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