The last 24 hours have been a mixed bag of reactions, emotions, and opinions on Courtney's health status.
Last night (Tuesday) at midnight, Courtney had reached a stage that Jennifer called the worst she had seen her have since being admitted to the PICU on Saturday night. However, by 6:00 AM this morning, she was looking the best that Jennifer had seen her during this stay in the PICU. She continued to look pretty good (relatively speaking) throughout the day.
She remains connected to several machines (ECMO, dialysis, ventilator, apheresis) and mulitple IV pumps and monitors. However, on a positive note, for a couple of times today she was able to tolerate some weaning off complete dependency of the ECMO machine. She was doing 50% of the work and the machine was doing 50% of the work.
Even with aggressive treatment, she continues to test positive for the staph infection. The infection has definitely affected her heart valve and its ability to work properly. A more invasive test of the heart valve will be performed some time on Thursday. The test will better evaluate her heart valve status and allow the doctors to begin formulating a plan.
One other positive note: This afternoon on multiple occasions, Courtney intentionally and successfully tried to open her eyes on Kelsey's command. If you know their relationship, it is no surprise since Kelsey has always been able to get Courtney to do things that other people could not. :-) To a lesser extent, she also opened her eyes for me, albeit was after they were moving her over and aroused her some. She opened them up a couple of times after that when I talked to her.
When the doctors were asked today "assuming the best possible outcome, how long should we expect to be in the PICU?", the answer was a consistent "weeks". Obviously, there is no answer to to how long it will be for all other possible outcomes.
We continue to request your prayer support. I have always believed in the power of prayer and I would love to have all 50 states represented when praying for her. If you have friends and family in other states, please feel free to outstretch our prayer chain to other states.
God bless you for your support and thank you to everyone who has left comments here, texted your support, or left us messages on Facebook.
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