Prayers for a little one...

A friend of mine from Jr. High and High School, Melissa, and her husband, who I have known since elementary school, Nathen Brewer, just had a beautiful baby girl. Her mommy is doing fine, but Kayelyn has had some difficulties after she was born. She had a pneumothorax and was air lifted to the nearby NICU. She is getting better day by day. Here is the latest from her mommy:

"Good news, Kayelyn is slowly improving. We are Cautiously Optimistic- BUT-- She is responding well to treatment. She has a huge team of doctors called fellows that have been assigned to her case-- these guys are the "big guns" of neonatologists. They are a special team of doctors assigned to the critical/high risk infants in the NICU.The official diagnosis is RDS (Respiratory Distress Syndrome), PPHN (Persistant Pulmonary Hypertension) and Pneumothorax. The odds of a full term baby being born with RDS are 5% of all babies born. The odds of developing problems like Kayelyn's are less than 1%.She is fighting hard and so far is really doing well. The Nitric Oxide is working. As of today, both of her chest tubes, that have been used to drain air and fluid from her chest through from the pneumothorax have been clamped off. The doctor will have them out by Wednesday at the latest. This is a huge step in the right direction. Her oxygen she is receiving is at 51% and she is saturating at 100%. If her next blood gas comes back good, they will lower her to 48%. Tomorrow they will begin weaning off the nitric and changing off the oscillator onto a conventional ventilator. Once this happens, Nathan and I can hold her!! We hope this happens in the next 2-3 weeks-- it could always happen sooner but this is what the doctor is projecting. She has to be at 20% oxygen to be breathing like you and I. It still looks like at least a month until she is released, if not longer (up to 3 months). They have also let up on her sedation/paralytic and she is starting to come around and open her eyes and move. As long as she cooperates with the doctors (She gets a bit fiesty at times) they will allow her to stay off the sedation.I am posting some new pictures soon! Please continue to pray!!!"

All I can ask is to keep Miss Kayelyn and her family in your prayers. If you want the latest update you can check out Melissa's web page at http://www.myspace.com/missytheaggie