Another "Hiccup"

I'm going to try to keep this short. It's late so I probably won't meet my typical 1,000 word post. Be grateful.

After a VERY tough week and even tougher weekend, Quinn was not improving. In fact, she was kind of on the downhill. Didn't want to eat, was not interested in walking around, playing, or even comforted when we held her. In the coming days, I will go back and question my mommy instincts over and over - but I knew something was not right on Friday. I even called the cardiologist fellow to check in. But she was not running a fever, and deep down a part of me was just praying that we were just one day from turning a corner.

Not so.

I finally listened to my heart and took Q to the TCH emergency room this afternoon. I cannot speak highly enough of the staff there that had us in and out of triage within minutes and in a private room in 5 minutes so that she wouldn't be exposed to any ER germs. 

They ran multiples tests, did a bunch of blood draws, had to put in a catheter to collect urine (poor, poor sweet Quinn), and had a chest x-ray.

No less than 10 minutes after the chest xray, the cardiologist on call came in.

The diagnosis: Quinn has "pleural effusion" --- basically she has this large pocket of fluid in her lungs that is pushing on her diaphragm and making everything extremely painful --- which explains why she couldn't be comforted, even in our arms.  It's not necessarily a rare complication of her surgery but one we weren't exactly aware of.

The good news: her labs are perfect - no signs of post-op infection, which was really on my mind as I was driving her there in the pouring down rain. Her WBC is completely normal, as was everything else.

So basically this means we are checking into TCH for a few more days - Matt is there now (I had to come home to get Ryan from the sitter) and will rejoin tomorrow morning. They will likely put a chest tube in tomorrow morning (through her rib cage) to drain the fluid. The chest tube will stay in place for approximately 24 hours, then they will remove it, observe for 24 more hours and then hopefully & prayerfully we will be home.

I was questioning if I would even post this --- but there are soooo many of y'all who have prayed so faithfully for Quinn, I wanted you to know. If you have any extra prayers left :), please pray for these things:

1. Release from pain - she was miserable. They ended up giving her morphine to ease the pain and right now she is comfortable.

2. That tomorrow's procedure will be without incident. We specifically pray that they won't have to put her under a general, but instead do it locally with sedation. 4 breathing tubes in less than 2 weeks would be sooo much on her little body.

3. Please pray that this is the only issue. Pray that Matt & I can continue to balance and roll with what's coming.

Love you all. More to come later.