Amazing Madelyn Grace: Uphill climb.

Good morning. Not too much to report on just yet, but here’s a quick update on what the doctor and nurses have said to us:

The last time they took her temperature she was at 102.9, which concerned us a bit, and her white blood cell count is up. The trauma doctor told us that burn patients normally run a bit of a fever. They are trying to pinpoint the cause of the fever. It might not be pneumonia; it might just be because of her burns. Something we’ve learned about burn patients is that they tend to run a cooler temperature after the accident so they always keep her room very warm, and Mad’s fever is always a little high because of that. But this fever is just a bit too high, so they’re keeping an eye on that.

The respiratory therapist came in and checked on her and said her lungs are looking better. They’re going to pause her sedation to see if she will wake up. They told us that people who don’t normally take a lot of medication take a little longer to wake up from being sedated, and Madelyn is a take-only-one-Tylenol kind of woman so she’s just taking her time. She moves her head around when people are in her room talking though, so we believe that she can hear. Her day nurse Baylee is in with Mad now, and she is moving around a bit and kind of wincing at the pain while she’s getting assessed. No eyes opening just yet, but once they have her off of the sedation for a bit we may start to see more eye movement. She’s still on very strong pain meds that make her sleepy, and they talked about giving her some eye drops to see if that will help.

Her oxygen was at 60% pretty much all day yesterday and last night, and they’ve moved her down to 50% this morning. The trauma doctor said that they will try and move her down to 40% by the end of the day. Depending on how she does with that, they will stop forcing the oxygen into her lungs and start blowing oxygen past her trach to see how she pulls it in on her own. The next step would be capping the trach to see if she can breath on her own. We are excited to see Mad take these steps when the time comes!

We got a visit from a therapy dog today! His name is Oliver and he’s a German Shepard and a very good boy.

We’re getting a lot of information all at once sometimes, but at the end of the day the doctors and nurses all say Mad is on a steady uphill climb.

One more thing to add to your prayers; there is a very nice family who have been in the ICU for the last 20 days with a sweet 16-year-old girl who unfortunately passed away today due to complications from a car accident. They always checked in on how Mad is doing, and our hearts just break for this family. Prayers for them while they navigate this news and as Ambria goes to be with the Lord.

We’ll check back in with y’all later. Thank you! Love you!

Romans 5:8 - I have loved you in your darkest.