Reading Response 6: Mistaken Identity

Chapter 8 is only about ten pages long, but it is entitled "First Milestone." This chapter talks about how Laura is progressing. The family continues to right on the blog every day to keep people updated on her condition. Laura is taken off of the ventilator and receives a tracheotomy, which will allow them to remove the ventilator from her mouth and insert it directly into the trachea. They did this to reduce the risk of infection and also decrease Laura's risk of developing pneumonia. The doctors discussed a number of procedures needed to be done to Laura for her to fully recover. They still needed to reset her broken elbow and stabilize her broken legs. They continue to ask for prayers from families. The chapter is entitled "First Milestone" because Laura went through her first major surgery, and everything went very smoothly. The blog post from Monday, May 1, 2006 read:

"Tomorrow morning, Laura is scheduled to go into surgery at 8:30. The fact that they are planning on doing surgery at this point is good news; it means they believe she is stable enough to handle a number of procedures. First, they will be setting her broken elbow and leg (femur) and possibly inserting pins where necessary. After the accident, they set them temporarily and now they will be setting them for good. While Laura is under, they will also do a tracheotomy. This has a number of purposes. They will remove the ventilator from her mouth and throat and insert it directly into the trachea at the incision point. This will help to reduce the risk of infection from the ventilator. This will also reduce the risk for pneumonia and lessen the severity of pneumonia, if she was to get it. The tracheotomy will also increase the potential to take Laura off the ventilator sooner.

When they do the surgery tomorrow, they will probably remove the tuve from her head that monitors her intercranial pressure (ICP). This is the device that has been measuringi any potential swelling of the brain. Since they haven't detected any significant swelling and pressure, the expect to remove it. 

Please continue to pray and pass this along to your prayer groups."

- Lisa Van Ryn

 

There isn't really much to conclude about this part of the story, except that Laura is strongly improving and everything went fine through the surgery. If I were the doctors in this situation I would feel so miserable if I were to let this family down. I am so happy that everything is coming along as smoothly as it can at this moment.