Liliana Sue

For those of you who don't know, Liliana underwent surgery this week. She underwent a tracheotomy on Friday. We didn't even know that they were planning it so soon until last Wednesday. It took us by surprise and did not give us too much time to prepare ourselves mentally and emotionally. We were increasingly nervous because of Liliana's previous experience with general anesthesia. This nervousness would turn out to be justified. Immediately after the procedure she was sleeping. We were told that it would take a while for the anesthesia to completely be out of her system. After 24 hours and she was still not waking up we started worrying more and more. Not only this, she has developed multiple other complications. She was extremely pale. Aparently she needed to receive some blood, which improved her color. Her sodium level was extremely low, which is probably another reason why she wasn't waking up and definitely not feeling too well. Her trach is very positional and if her neck and body are not aligned in the right way she does not get enough oxygen and desaturates. When she does desaturate it takes her a long time to come back up to normal. Most of the time she has been on higher amounts of oxygen than she has been on in a long time. She has been getting mucus plugs that block her trach and also cause her to desaturate. She is extremely swolen which probably does not feel to well. She has fluid around both of her lungs which could impede her breathing if it increases. Luckily, the fluid level has remained the same so far. She was so stressed by this and everything going on that yesterday they had to give her a sedative medication to calm her down. I just feel so bad for her, she can not be feeling well at all. The bad thing is that the doctors have to take things one at a time right now. I just hope that she starts to feel better real soon. The only good thing that has come out of this so far is that we can now see her face without all the tubing in the way, and a beautiful face it is. However, it is a lot more swolen than it usually is. She will look even more beautiful once all of this swelling goes down. Anyway, this is the latest on what is going on. I wish I had some better news for you all. Here are some recent pictures. Hope you enjoy.
This was the day of the surgery. She was all ready to go, we were just waiting for them to come get her. This is the last time we would see her with an endotracheal tube.

This was after the procedure obviously. Overall she looked fine after the surgery. She was a little pale but that was to be expected. Over the next 24 hours however, things considerably worse.

This is a cute picture of her. She looks as if nothing had happened.

You can just tell how swolen her face and body are in this one.

Make sure you click on the photos to view the larger sizes. I hope to have some good news for you all next time I post, and some better pictures as well.