Sorry I didn't get a post up last night. I didn't have internet access. We moved out of the sleep room at the hospital so another family from out of town could use it last night. Britney had a great day yesterday. It was a very great day. She had a trial off the ECMO so they could get a echocardiogram. Her heart did wonderful, even better when the ECMO was off briefly yesterday. There is talk of taking her off it completely today or tomorrow. The other big thing that happened yesterday is she developed a ventilator pneumonia in her left lung. She was already empirically covered with the antibiotics she was on. They also put a scope into her lungs and washed a ton of it out and got samples for cultures. Yesterday she also started dialysis. This is a very common thing in ECMO and from what I have been told the kidney's usually return to their normal function. She has moved both sides of her body, and has turned her head. We have seen tears come up in her eyes quickly while talking to her. One of the night nurses last night said that he saw her follow his face with her eyes which is huge improvement. The Neurologist said her CT scan looks amazing. No areas of lack of blood flow he can see. This is not sensitive enough to see smaller brain damage. According to the EEG there was some damage to the cortex of her brain diffusely but he said that it will be a long time before we know her long term function and he is hopeful much will continue to return. She is young and healthy. She was placed on ECMO as fast as possible and her brain was cooled immediately after starting the ECMO. Thank you all for waiting so patiently for this update.

Today she needs many prayers to help her fight this pneumonia, and if they take her off ECMO in the operating room today. Thank you all for your love and support.

For people helping in Tucson.
I am setting up a online calender in a gmail account so people can know what kind of help we have from day to day and so we can sign people up who want to bring food or play with the kids. I tried to copy and paste the calender into the blog last night but it didn't work so we may have to have one or two people sign people up to help and have links to the PDF calender file daily on the blog. Have a great weekend.
John