God is in Control

Hi All, I want to thank everyone for their prayers and support. God has answered your prayers and she is doing much better now! We are so grateful to all of you that have kept Mia and our family in your thoughts and prayers. This little girl has an amazing future ahead of her, her life is a testament to the Lord and his power.

Two nights ago I spent the whole night by Mia's bed watching the Nurse and Respiratory Therapist work with Mia. At that time Mia was very unstable and had to be bagged quite often to keep her ventilated. The night nurse and RT worked very hard and successfully got Mia stabilized to the point where she wasn't needing to be bagged every few minutes. At one time during the night Mia de-satted all the way down to where the machine couldn't read a signal and her heart rate when from 150 all the way down to about 50. The nurse and RT did a great job of staying calm and bagging her until she recovered but this episode was way to close for comfort.

Once the RT started working to keep Mia's lungs open with Albuterol though Mia started to stabilize and she had a fairly calm night. When the day shift came in Mia had a couple of desat episodes where she needed to be bagged. Looking at the machine I could see that Mia's lungs had closed down and that she was working with about 30% of the normal flow of air that she typically would have. Of course with so little air movement it was hard to keep her oxygen up and her CO2 down. The new day nurse was bagging Mia every few minutes to Mia going. During this time I was trying to tell the nurse what the night shift had done to keep Mia's lungs open but the day nurse would not listen to me. She was working on the assumption that Mia was having seizures even though it was obvious she wasn't seizing and the problem was her airways were clamped down. Between sleep exhaustion and the pressure I was just about at my breaking point and ready to set this nurse straight but thankfully Rachael pulled me out of the room to let me cool down.

Later in the morning Dr. Silva who is Mia's doctor at the Children's Recovery Center and also works here at Good Samaritan came in to look at Mia. Listening to the questions he was asking and the comments he was making I could tell that he was pretty worried. From the chest xray Mia's left lung was completely clouded over with pnuemonia. Even worse, Mia was so tight in the chest that she was only getting about 30% of the air flow through her lungs that she would normally have. Even with the ventilator at high pressures they could not keep enough air moving to keep Mia's O2 stats from climbing through the roof. I desperately needed some sleep I was reluctant to leave because I wasn't sure if Mia was going to pull through on this one. Finally they got Mia somewhat stable and I felt good enough about her that I went back to Rachael's parents place and slept for a couple of hours while Rachael stayed with Mia.

I texted Rachael and called her a couple of times to find out how things where going. She said that they had given her steroids and that had opened up Mia's lungs dramatically. That was big turning point because now they where able to keep her lungs open and she was not needing to be bagged. Last night Mia had an excellent night nurse that did an awesome job at keeping Mia stable. She was very good about being proactive instead of reactive. She was patient in letting Mia work some things out on her own while keeping a careful eye on her. This was in contrast to the day nurse who both Rachael and I struggled to deal with. Rachael and I stayed in a small room for parents in the NICU and got some much needed rest while Mia was in good hands with her night nurse.

This morning Mia has been quite a trooper. All of her numbers have been very good and her airways are much more open. In fact Dr. Silva came in and told me he was very happy to see that Mia was doing much better. Her latest chest xray showed good improvement over the previous xray. He commented that he didn't know why she was doing better (of course we all know why...) but he was happy that she was.

So now Mia is resting comfortably and doing very well. She wakes up occasionally and looks around before she slips back to sleep. Thank you to all of you that have been praying for Mia. It's amazing how much of a fighter she is and how God has been with her and us throughout this whole experience.

I want to share a little tidbit that I wasn't able to the other night. For those of you that prayed for me as I drove out from Las Vegas. When I got the call from Rachael on Saturday that Mia was headed to the hospital I started to get the house ready so I could leave. Within about two hours I was on the road headed out of Las Vegas just as the fireworks started for the 4th of July. As I was driving I was not sure how I was going to be able to stay awake for the whole drive as it was already about 9pm and I had at least 9 hours of driving to do. I was expecting to have a rough night ahead of me wondering if I would even be able to make it.

Ordinarily I would listen to the radio to help keep me awake but the radio in my car gets really bad reception and I can only get stations only in the city. As I was leaving Las Vegas I decided to turn on the radio and listen to it as far as it would last which I expected to be about 10 miles outside of Las Vegas. In fact that night God had something else in mind... Not only did I have reception outside of Las Vegas, I had reception ALL the way to San Jose. In fact the odd thing about it was that I was picking up a San Jose radio station just when I had crossed the border into California and even more odd was that when I got to just south of San Jose I was picking up a Las Vegas radio station! For a car that usually turns to static just a few miles from town I was picking stations up that where over 400 miles away and had a whole mountain range between me. I was able to listen to the radio the whole night and stay alert for the entire drive. I gassed up in Las Vegas and did not stop until I pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Thank you to all of you that prayed to keep me awake and alert because I could have never managed the trip without that prayer.

Well, it's time to publish this so those of you that are anxiously waiting for news can read it. Thanks again for all of your thoughts and prayers. Please continue to keep praying.

Robert