shayla: December 2009

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

we have finally hit 1 yr since transplant

this is shayla after her chest was closed

well technically her 1 yr is tomorrow so i am a day early but we have hit it with no issues the only reasons we have ended up in the hospital is 1 cmv back in march then in june for her gj tube placement and then in september because she got sick but none of it has been the heart directly she hasnt had any signs of rejection since transplant she has been doing awsome she is progressing everyday something new she likes to sit up for with help still of course she babbles alot and is just all around happy i wouldnt trade her for anything she is my special baby i wouldnt know what to do without her she makes me so happy everyday i still remember when we got the call that they got a heart for her i didnt know what to do it was 6 in the morning on the 8th of december and Jason our favorite transplant cordinator called and told us we started calling everyone we knew and telling them that we finally got one after 6 months of waiting maybe a little over but hey we had gone through so much with her and we were starting to think that maybe this is it that it wasnt going to happen when it did we went over to the hospital waiting and waiting tell it came in and it

ended up not happening tell 1:30 am on december 9th that was the longest wait ever she got out of surgery about 7:30 in the morning on the 9th anddr cohan had come out and told us that the heart was beating and looked good even though her chest wasnt closed until december 23rd it has been the best and worst year but it happens and we have her and she is the best christmas present we could ever ask for we thank all of our friends and family that stood by us through those hard times and helped us keep our spirits up when things were rough. since it has been a year i think it is time for our family to write a letter to our donor family and thank them for the best gift of all i know they lost the one they love as well but maybe it will help knowing the gift that they gave to us this picture is shayla back in august september she now doesnt have the o2 during the day.

We love you all we love you too especially shayla happy heart birthday

Shayla's Story

Shayla R. Wilson was born November 5th of 2007. While pregnant with her I was told that she had a defect called atrial septal defect (left side of heart was bigger than her right) she also was born with one kidney. After shayla was born we were in the NICU for exactly 1 wk when we left the hospital her pda (something all babies are born with) was closing about a week after we went home it actually shot back open so we ended up in the hospital we got out almost a week later and then we flew to Seattle children’s hospital to have the pda legated.Once that was done we went home and she was doing good for about 2 weeks she had started gaining on average 3ozs a day which is not good for babies our pediatrician kept telling me that it was fine and she was fine even though I knew it didn't seem right on December 16th we took her to the er because she was really fussy hadn't slept in 24hrs really and wouldn't eat when they looked at her they said that all she had was gas and that they weren't going to admit her "yet" is what the doctor told us on December 19th they admitted her to the hospital her o2 stats were only about 30 percent once we were admitted they had given her blood and she had gotten her o2 back up but she would still desat to about 69 percent and she was suppose to stay between 75 and 85 percent we stayed in the twin falls hospital tell December 30th even though they weren't doing anything we couldn't have done at home they released her with o2 blow by and we were told we had to go to Boise they next day while in twin falls they also told us that a baby should only gain 1 ounce to a ounce and a half a day so I fired her pediatrician and got another one.When we got to the Boise hospital we got admitted there so her cardiologist could keep a close eye on her. While at that hospital she got RSV and ended up on the ventilator. So we had to push back coming to Seattle for the surgery that she needed which was a BT shunt and a av valve repair to try and fix the whole in her heart we got released from Boise on January 17th but we couldn't go home we stayed at the Ronald McDonald house in Boise until we flew out on January 20 and then we would go to Seattle and be admitted and they were going to do the surgery on January 22nd. On January 22nd we were told that they couldn't do her surgery because her lungs were still inflamed from the rsv she had gotten in Boise we were released from Seattle tell the 30th which was when they would do they surgery we didn't make it out tell then we were discharged on January 24th and back in January 26th I had taken her to the er because once again she hadn't slept and was really fussy and I did everything that I could to try to keep her calm and nothing I would do would work they admitted her that night and I went back to the hotel after she finally got a room at 12am they called me at 5am telling me she was fussy and just wouldn't calm down the only thing I knew to tell them was that that was why I had brought her back and to give her lasix (a diuretics) cause I knew she also had a lot of fluid on board at 8am they called and told me she had coded and they had to put her on the ventilator I rushed to the hospital and I knew it wasn't good I got there and they told me that she had gotten worse and that they needed to get her surgery done which I could have told them but they didn't want to listen when I was telling them of course what do I know! They took her back for surgery on January 30th 2008 for the av valve repair and BT shunt. We stayed on the ventilator for 8 weeks when we finally got down to the normal floor and out of the icu about a week after we got down there she crashed and had to be put back on the ventilator from then on we continued to fight with the ventilator we were on and off a lot.On July 2nd we almost lost shayla she had gotten a really bad infection that showed up in 3 hours we tried to get her to purk up for 8 hours we had actually signed papers to let the doctors put her on life support thank god about an hour after they got back there they came out and told us that they sliced her leg and put in an arterial line and she perked up so we avoided the life support. After those things seemed to be getting better but we were still on the ventilator no matter what we did nothing seemed to work to get her off of it.In November she got really sick again she had a fever of 107 for at least 24hrs and we couldn’t figure out where it came from the next thing that we knew she started having seizures. They put her on a med to control the seizures and finally after 48hrs the fevers stopped somewhat. They couldn’t figure out why any of this happened they did a spinal tap and saw that there was some white blood cells in her fluid and you’re not supposed to have any so they think she had a mild case of spinal meningitis also they told us at this time that because of a stroke that she had way back in February that she was more likely that she will have seizures so she will be on this seizure medication for the rest of her life. During this she also had gotten inactivated on the transplant list. A week or so later everything was somewhat normal and they put her back on the transplant list. A week after that she got a HEART on December 9th of 2008.She had a rough time after her heart transplant but she made it through everything and is doing good today and she is off the ventilator but she is still on what they call a bipap that just pushes pressure into her lungs. Everything is good and we are actually expected to be out of the hospital within a month maybe a little longer.

With love the Wilson Family

shayla

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

we have finally hit 1 yr since transplant

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