Today the surgeon was able to close Ela’s chest. The procedure went smoothly overall. She had some typical bleeding which is still being drained with 3 chest tubes. Her heart rate has been elevated since the closure, as to be expected. There really weren’t very many changes. Today was mainly just watching to see how she would do with the closure and adjusting med doses appropriately in response to what her body was telling us.

The team is closely monitoring all kinds of things but especially her kidney numbers. Ela’s kidneys have taken a hit. She went into this transplant with already having acute kidney injury. The team definitely doesn’t want to see her kidney numbers get any worse so we are praying that they start improving in the next 24 hours. Her heart function remains good…a huge praise! The goal for overnight is to try to start giving her a little bit of food (formula) through her j-tube very, very slowly (like only 5 ml/hr slow) while also going down on a couple of her med doses to see how she tolerates it.

Tomorrow, the plan is to start weaning her off the ventilator. The ventilator is doing 100% of the breathing for her right now so weaning her off is big thing. We are hoping her heart and body can start taking over the work on it’s own.

As always, we appreciate the prayers more than we can say! The Lord has been so good. Miguel and I are doing fine. I think we are still in a sense of awe and trying to wrap our minds around everything. It still feels surreal and overwhelming. It’s hard to verbally describe everything we are thinking, feeling and experiencing.

Thanks again. We will write again soon.