Well good news! Madi’s surgery should continue on as scheduled on Thursday!  The cultures they did to check for infection came back clear on two and the other one showed some growth but nothing too concerning.  They had planned on starting her on antibiotics before surgery so she just gets a few extra doses.  The plan for Thursday is to get started around 7am.  The first part of surgery will be placing her on ECMO.  The easiest way to explain that is as a bypass machine.  They will place large cannulas in her neck where all the blood will be taken from her body, cycled through a machine, warmed, oxygenated and returned to her body.  The machine will do all the work of her lungs.  The plan is for her to be on the ECMO for a little over a week. A nurse described the ECMO as “hours of boredom and moments of terror” there are many risks that go along with this, and she will be on blood thinners, so our prayer is that it won’t cause her any complications and she can come off of it easily. The next part of the surgery will be her repair.  They will go back in the same incision in her neck and actually bend the trachea out to sew it up.  I asked her surgeon how big her trachea and esophagus should be, and she said the size of a pencil. She estimated at least 2 hours of just sewing up each tube, so you can imagine how tedious this will be.  She then plans to reinforce the suture lines with something called core matrix, she will also put a layer of that in between to separate the two tubes. This a very delicate surgery, they have to be very diligent not to harm her vocal cords or any laryngeal nerves.  Once surgery is complete she will be back in the PICU and heavily sedated for a week. She will return to the OR on the 18th for a bronchoscopy, where they will look with a camera to see how things are healing. If all goes well the plan will be to wean the sedation and ECMO to get her back to breathing on her own. We know everyone has been praying for our sweet Madi, and we ask that you please continue. Especially that the surgery will go perfectly and she won’t suffer any complications from being on the ECMO support. The next week will be very critical for Madi! With that being said, we are choosing to limit her visitors.  She will have an around the clock respiratory therapist in the room with her that will manage the ECMO support as well as an around the clock nurse trained on ECMO that will be in her room as well. This is a very large, critical piece of equipment and we don’t want to increase any risks or chance of infection.  So please feel free to call, text and get in touch with us, and we will update as we can. The Lord has been so good to us through this whole situation and we know He is still able to heal our sweet baby girl! Please pray He will touch her and guide the doctors on Thursday and for the next long week of recovery.  Thank you all for your continued prayers, and support!