Keira Update 1
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7:30 AM tomorrow (Jan 6th) is Keira’s brain surgery. It is scheduled to take about 3 hours. We met again with the team today to go over the surgical details. Keira is handling this like she does everything..full steam ahead. She’s outwardly worried most about them shaving a bit of her hair but there is of course lots of emotions swirling about. Having your 18 year old fill out an advanced directive before brain surgery is a bit sobering. We know God holds her close and will guide the surgeons hands , the outcome and her recovery.
We were so close to getting Tate’s IV fluids and nutrition settled today. Ben Z came to the rescue with getting us connected with GI here at Mayo. They thought they could help. But as it turns out, they can’t write a script for a 15 year old. So….tomorrow night is the last night of tpn that I have. We’ve been wanting to trial Tate off it. But there’s a lot of nuances to doing this and this wasn’t what we would’ve chosen. so, we’ll see how this goes.
Thank you for all the messages and phone calls. I do read every one. I haven’t been as good at responding to each one. If I’ve missed you, please know that we are are grateful for all the love, support and prayers. I will update everyone once keira is out.
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Dr. Q with his surgery signature ready to roll. We feel so blessed that Keira is in the hands of this surgeon along with an amazing team. Keira rolled into surgery at 7:30 as scheduled. She gave us a thumbs up, reminded us not to worry, that she’ll be “just fine.” And told her team, “Let’s do this thing.” Thank you for all the prayers!
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Keira is off the ventilator. Praise the Lord! Struggling with nausea/vomiting so lots of sleepy meds. Scary for everyone involved. They think she was in metabolic acidosis but another Spiegelberg-unexpected and unexplained response.
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Quick Keira update:
Breathing well on oxygen. Struggling with fever, high heart rate, high blood pressure, nausea/vomiting (really tough after brain surgery,) stomach pain and the migraine is a given. Meds are helping with pain & nausea. Labs are showing an elevated white count so an X-ray and more labs are being run to weed out what is post surgery and what could be something else. Keira has a ventricular drain that keeping inter cranial pressure where it needs to be.
Today was a doozy. Long and intense and scary. So many people in and out and none with concrete answers as to what happened. Surgery lasted about double what was anticipated. During surgery k became clammy and sweaty and started with rapid, heaving breaths. They ordered a stat chest X-ray to check for pulmonary embolism which was clear. Post surgery, keira continued with very fast breathing and wouldn’t respond or wake up and couldn’t control her breathing on her own. Her body was making strange movements and she had everyone running. It was unexpected which made it that much more terrifying. The current best guess is a rare (go figure) reaction to anesthesia. It is another reason though that God led us here where Keira not only has the best neurosurgical team, but the best medical team all around. Not in one moment did I lack confidence in the team (huge for this very particular medical mama!) To hear Keira’s sweet voice tonight is the result of so many prayers answered. We continue to pray that vitals calm down, fever and pain goes away and labs fall WNL.
Thank you for all your prayers that carried us all today. Tate’s Tribe is Keira’s Tribe too.
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