Prayers Please

Here I go again, asking for prayers...but children and parents are in need!

Tommy is back in the PICU in a relative amount of pain. There is a problem with his new heart, which is scary and upsetting. Here is what was posted on his carepage by his mom's friend:

This evening Tommy was moved back into the pediatric ICU so doctors could keep a close watch over him. His belly was 30 inches around and causing him extreme discomfort late in the day. They started him on oxygen, milrinone and IV lasix to provide relief. He is currently sleeping peacefully in the ICU with mom and dad by his side.

His biopsy earlier today allowed the doctors to check the pressures in his heart and it was discovered that he has high diastolic (relaxing) pressures on the right side of his heart. According to Dr. Gajarski, there are a couple potential reasons for this problem and they need to determine the exact cause in order to know what to do next. He has said that there is no "magic medicine" for treating high diastolic pressure in the heart. They are waiting for the 2nd set of results from the biopsy that will tell them if Tommy has cellular rejection. They expect to know sometime tomorrow late afternoon. If the results show that he has cellular rejection, this is not ideal, however, they have a treatment protocol. If the results are negative for rejection, then Dr. Gajarski will need to reevaluate treatment options. The options before them are limited, difficult and uncertain. There is simply no clarity at this point.

Overall, Colleen has described the day as painful and confusing for Tommy, and emotional and difficult for all of them.

They are weary and need us to intercede and pray for them. If you pray, I beg you to call on the Lord to bring healing to Tommy and peace for his family.

In addition, a little girl named Lindsay, who also just received a new heart, has been placed on ECMO. ECMO is similar to the bypass machine they use in surgery, and it is NOT ideal to be on this for long. She is a "heart sister" to Tommy, they are both at UofM right now. Here is an excerpt for her mother's blog from yesterday:

Lucky....

This is the word that comes to mind after all of the events that transpired today. Lucky.

First, I would like to clarify what happened and tell you the results of the tests. There is a reason that my husband was with me today. In time of great urgency along with the emotions that go along with, we heard two different things and we were able to clarify once the dust settled a bit. What I am referring to is her heart. It DID stop this morning. However, this was not the issue, it was because of other issues that this happened. The issue was that she aspirated severely. This then lead to her not getting enough oxygen to her brain so she started seizing. Because of the lack of oxygen to her brain, this means that it is also not getting to her heart and that is why her heart stopped. We are thanking the Lord above that doctors and nurses were already at her bedside when this transpired and were able to start compressions immediately. Once they were able to move her to Pod A, they did get a heart beat but had to continue chest compressions because her blood pressure was not adequate and they still didn't have her lines in to medicate to control it. Chest x-ray from earlier was horrible. ECMO will give her a chance to rest for a couple of days and get rid of some of the fluid. One of the other major concerns is her kidneys. She is peeing like crazy so thanking God again that these seem to be functioning properly. Now to the brain. This is of course the biggest concern next to her heart, which is fine by the way!!!!!! Since she is on ECMO which is a lot of machinery to maneuver, they went ahead and just conducted a bedside ultrasound to see if they could see anything alarming. Drum roll please..........nothing alarming what so ever! AMEN!!!!! Now, this still doesn't mean that she doesn't have any problems, it just means that there isn't a reason to take her down to get the head CT right away. We will just have to reconsider if she shows signs of brain related problems. Lindsay does have much better color when we were able to see her again around 2pm. Her head, hands, and feet were definitely pinker. Still blue, but better.

Please keep Lindsay, Tommy, their parents and the staff at UofM in your prayers.

Thank you.