Last September

Hey there, 

As we mentioned before Luna went through couple surgeries last year and let me explain you how hard was for us to saw our little Luna fight for her life every day. 

On September 14, Luna was scheduled for her 3rd surgery, a reanasatomosis (An Ileostomy reversal rejoins the two ends of the bowel that were cute after an Ileostomy) the purpose of this surgery is to restore bowel function. In this surgery, her G-tube was placed as well, after 5 hours surgery, they bring her back to her room where I was waiting for her. The first day after her surgery she was under a lot a pain but of course she was receiving medication for the pain. 

On her 3rd day of recovery, we received a call from the doctors that Luna was needing a little more of support, with this being said, she passes from the ventilator to the oscillator vent (The technique uses a reciprocating diaphragm to deliver very high respiratory rates and connected to a standard endotracheal tube. The primary setting is mean airway pressure, as the flow oscillates around a constant due to the high respiratory rates.) At this time, they found out that she got an infection in her blood (Pseudomonas: is a type of bacteria that is found commonly in the environment, like soil and in water, which can cause infections in the blood, lungs(pneumonia), or other parts of the body after surgery), and this one was causing her sepsis (a serious condition resulting from the presence of harmful microorganisms in the blood or other tissues and the body's response to their presence, potentially leading to the malfunctioning of various organs, shock, and death.

 On September 17th I was spending the night at the hospital with her and when the alarms went off and less than 30 seconds the room was full of nurses, doctors. Immediately i step out of the room and the first thing that I did was to pray, I mentioned myself a lot of times please God help her, please God heal her, Please God don't take her away! After 5 min, the doctor step out and explain that one of her lungs collapse due to the infection and they will keep her monitoring to help her out, after 40 min it happened again but this time was the other lung, her organs start to fail due to Pseudomonas. It was one of the longest nights that I never experimented in my entire life as a mom. The next night Marco and I spend the night with her, everything was looking fine. I did step out of the room to go into another room to pump when I start Hearing code white, code white and I step out I saw a lot of nurses running through the hall, inside of me I said please don't be Lunas room please don't, but unfortunately it happen again but this time Marco was inside and he was there seeing how all the doctors and nurses were trying to safe Luna's life. A doctor stepped in and said we have options to help Luna release all the extra fluids in her body, he talked about chest tubes, re-open her incision and ECMO. We both said do what you have to do but please safe her! in the moment we were full of anxiety, stress and all our emotions were involved. 

The first doctor came in and give us their updates, unfortunately Luna is not responding to the re-open surgery, we have to try ECMO (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the blood is pumped outside of your body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and send oxygen-filled blood back to tissues in the body. Blood flows from the right side of the heart to the membrane oxygenator in the heart-lung machine, and then rewarmed and sent back to the body. This method allows the blood to ''bypass'' the heart and lungs, allowing these organs to rest and heal). As soon they did try ECMO Luna's signal vitals start increasing the last surgery they did was the chest tubes (A flexible chest tube is insert into the air-filled space and may be attached to a one-way calve device that continuously removes air from the chest cavity until the lung is re-expanded and healed) I couldn't imagine everything, we were really scared for everything. 

Luna was on ECMO for 7 days, the longest days full of doctors, nurses and machines in the room. They did couple trails to see if Luna can be Decannulated (Is the removal of the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation ECMO Cannula) When they started doing this procedure on Sept. 29 the attempt to do a broviac (Central venous catheter that is tunneled under the skin and inserted into a vein under the collarbone or in the neck) she suffers a cardiac Arrest for Almost 35 minutes, Dr. Guner and all the team we were able to save her after to do CPR on her and placed her back in ECMO. She was for another 5 days in ECMO but before to try again to decannulated, they bring us into a room to discuss on Luna's wishes. They went clear on if happens again what it happened last time we will stop! I could contain myself and I did cry a lot because I was 100% sure that my baby wants to live and that she is a fighter, and no one can change my mind in the moment. But also, they said if everything is successful, we will have a team that will be taking care of Luna. After an hour and a half on October 4th she was successfully Decannulated. After couple days and before they removed the tube in her mouth she got an MRI, because the biggest concern was her brain could bleed from not being with oxygen for 35 minutes. Here is where, we believe the miracles exist and God made one in Luna. Luna's MRI looks good, and she didn't present any damage on her brain which the doctor can't explain. 

On October 17, after 33 longs days we were able to hold Luna. I can't explain what our hearts we were feeling in this time, even I still can't explain our feelings of this long month that past. That only thing that I can said is that I am very grateful with all the support from family, friends, nurses, doctors and all the persons that we came across in this difficult time and of course God because he was our savior. 

Thank you all for read! Definitely is not easy to put everything together in one page.