Evening Update (8-4)

We only stayed a short time tonight as Karsie seemed to be comfortably sleeping so we didn't want to disturb her too much since she has had a rough couple of days.  She seems to be doing much better on the pain medicine and we hope she stays comfortable.  The balancing act here is that they don't like to keep babies on pain medicine after they take out the breathing tube, so that may make her hurt a bit more.  However, with the tube in, she is most likely uncomfortable which makes the pain medicine necessary.  The balance that needs to happen is for her to be on long enough for her to be comfortable when they take her off.  She just needs to learn telepathy so she can tell us when she hurts.

A note about Karsie's patch.  Our nurse tonight, Amy, told us that Dr. Saenz came by and wasn't real thrilled about the ripped stitches.  He wanted to be notified immediately if there were any more rips, or if any organs were exposed.  The good news here is that the part that the patch uncovered is the skin matrix which is where the new skin will grow shortly.  And, it's quite a healthy bit of growth given the time (that's our take...the surgeon hasn't exactly told us that). When we were there Dr. Losasso, our other surgeon, came over and looked at it.  He didn't seem too concerned about it because it is doing what it is supposed to be doing, but he definitely thought it should be watched carefully.  We plan on talking to Dr. Saenz about it too as he was the one that put on the patch.  From what it sounds like, if more stitches were to rip, there would be another minor surgery to repair just those stitches.  We obviously don't want that to happen.  It sounds like Karsie ripped it from excessive moving, which we are sure was from her pain, and her bearing down so hard.  If this is the case, we are a little upset that there wasn't more effort to minimize her pain.  All of our nurses have said that they have been after the doctors for well over three days to do something about it.  Good news is that she is now on it, so hopefully she will be much more comfortable so more extensive damage won't be caused.  

She is still continuing to be on the same ventilator settings, so no movement yet.  We're a little glad that she is taking her time on this now so that later she won't have to be reintubated. 

Mmmmm....pain medicine....
FAT ROLLS!!!  Yay Fatty!