7/29/06: Day 15 (Sat.) PDA Treatment Started

Although Evan celebrated his 2-week birthday yesterday, he is 33 weeks (adjusted gestational age) as of today...so getting closer to that 40-week full-term target age. We had a good talk with his resident (Andrea) today, but were bummed to hear she will be shifting over to TMC in a week or so. The residents switch locations every 30 days. She assured us the resident taking her place will be fully informed of Evan's condition.

Evan was even more fidgety today than we had seen him in the past. The nurse thinks that he's reached that tolerance point for the Fentanyl and is starting to feel things a bit more. They bumped up his dosage to get him to settle down a bit more. They also took an upper-body x-ray to make sure his PIC line is in the correct location after his nurse noticed that when she touched the area on his arm where the PIC line is, he became more agitated. The x-ray came back with no indication that his line was out of place, so he was just not a happy guy today! He kept opening his mouth wide like he was trying to yawn (or trying to get that respirator tube out).

They started him on the medication to help close his PDA problem. He'll get that medication over the course of three days. We'll know more on Tuesday when they do an ultrasound on his chest. The ultrasound will be able to tell if the medication worked or if he has to have the PDA ligation surgery. He did get a little blood transfusion today since his platelet counts were down a bit. Although he's A+ like both T and I are, he gets O- blood during the transfusion.

We had a good long visit with him today. I got to take his temperature and change his diaper again. Most of the time T and I had our hands on him trying to get him to settle down, but it didn't work too well. Hopefully tomorrow we can get an updated picture of him to post. :-)

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UMc Charges: $7,680.65
Running Total: $163,010.09
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7/20/06: Day 6 (Thu.) Chin-Butt Alert

Busy day today...thanks to my Doctrine co-workers for throwing me a baby shower/luncheon at Johnny Carino's. I'll go out to eat anytime, just give me a call!

We drove up to Tucson around 2:30pm...getting there sometime after 4pm. Evan is off the bililights (yea)! The nurses say the jaundice could come back, so no need to worry if we visit another day and he's back under the light. Now we could sort of see his face without the eye covers on. His eyes (and face in general) are swollen from water retention.

From the picture you can see that Evan does have a little inkling of a chin cleft (or "chin-butt" as we call it), indicating that he is indeed momma's boy! Score one for mom! His hair is still a mess since he hasn't has a bath yet, so we can't really tell what his hair color is.

He is still on the oscillating ventilator which is giving him 500 breaths per minute, but they have reduced the amplitude settings (meaning, the breaths aren't as forceful). We got to speak with one of the resident doctors and she said they hope to start feeding him through a gavage (instead of the umbilical cord) maybe Friday. What they will do is test him to see if he will tolerate being fed through the gavage (feeding tube through the nose down into the stomach) and increase the amount given to him. If he doesn't tolerate it (if he is showing too much bile in his system), they'll put him back on the umbilical cord IV feed line.

His CO2 levels are still coming down (I think they were in the 40's), which is good. They took another chest x-ray and it is slowly getting clearer. They are still trying to determine what caused the Tuesday episode by doing a culture of some lung fluid. In the lab, they'll work with it to see if any viral or bacterial stuff appears. It takes a few days to do it, so no results yet. With all the people in and out of the NICU and different people handling the babies, it's a wonder more babies don't catch a little bug.

His red blood cell counts are going up, so he didn't have to have any blood transfusions. While we were there, we got to see the nurse do the fun job of flipping him from his belly to his back and rotating him (his bed is slightly slanted so he needed to be upright). It took a team of 3 people all having to pitch in and help since he is a tangle of IV lines and his respirator tubes. His poor little head is all misshapen since he has to keep his head turned to the side for the ventilator. You can sort of see in the picture (that was after they flipped and rotated him) that the side of his head is flat.

So, overall, it was a good day...no major bump in the road.

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Chronological age: 0 months 0 weeks 6 days
Adjusted/Gestastional age: 31 5/7 weeks
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UMC Charges: $$8,176.30
Running Total: $94,263.14
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7/19/06: Day 5 (Wed.) Lungs Healing

First off, Happy Birthday to my Mom down in Florida!! I don't think we're planning a trip up to Tucson today. I'm working on getting paperwork done for medical leave, Evan's birth certificate and other stuff.

I spoke with Evan's nurse this morning (Marianne). She was the nurse on duty yesterday when he had the bad day. She said he is doing much better now. His morning chest x-ray still was a cloudy-white, but not as bad as yesterday. She said the doctors are just letting him run his course, there's not much worry at this point.

She said last night when they suctioned his lungs there was a little bit of a pink tinge indicating some blood, but this morning when she suctioned him again, he was all clear. Yesterday, prior to his episode right when we got there, Marianne had given him a dose of blood platelets which they think may have helped him heal faster. They think he had some sort of scratch in his lungs that caused all that blood to appear yesterday (which is a common thing due to that darn respirator). Last night, his red blood count was low, so he got a little bit of blood again. They are continuing to check his blood gas counts every few hours.

They hope to take him off the bililights maybe tomorrow since the jaundice is working its way out. Marianne said his leg bruising is almost gone also. So all in all, it's a good day so far. I'll call the night shift nurses this evening to see how all goes today and post more later.

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Chronological age: 0 months 0 weeks 5 days
Adjusted/Gestastional age: 31 4/7 weeks
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UMC Charges: $9,506.05
Running Total: $86,086.84
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