Hard Day

I got a call from Wendy today that Luke was not having a good day. The doctors and nurses do everything they can to prepare you for the eventual bad days, but after so many good days - the bad ones can hit you pretty hard.

Apparently his breathing was pretty labored this morning so they were keeping a pretty close eye on him and ran some tests. One of the blood tests found increased levels of acid, which was causing him to have the labored breathing. To neutralize the acid, the doctor gave him some sodium bicarbonate. The next challenge was to figure out why his acid levels were increased. The doctor had two main hypothesis, 1) possible infection or 2) his PDA re-opened causing an inflamed digestive track. During all of this, they decided to stop his feedings.

Around this time, Wendy had to go pump. When she returned, the transport team was bringing a new baby into Luke's room which can take up to an hour. Unfortunately no one can be in the room during a transition so Wendy had to leave without knowing how Luke was. Wendy was frustrated and called me to let me know what was going on.

I got to the hospital around 5:30 after having numerous scary thoughts about Luke pass through my mind during the drive. Fortunately things had improved quite a bit - Lucas was sleeping on his stomach and looking very comfortable.

The blood tests revealed that he did not have an infection and the scan did not show that his PDA had opened. The only thing they could think of was that he was very exhausted, which was causing him to breathe heavier, which affected his acid levels for some reason. To alleviate the breathing issues, they increased his oxygen saturation and flow - up from 2 liters to 6. The increased air flow helped take the strain off of his little body. If things get worse, they may have to put him back on the ventilator.

In the meantime, the doctor had also given the green light to restart the feedings which was good. He was also off of the billirubin lights which means I might get to hold him tomorrow if he's stable!

So what did I learn from today? God made babies tough and he gave doctors & nurses about a million ways to help them.

Please pray that God will sustain Luke with the energy to keep pumping that little heart and lungs of his which are so critical to his development.

Cheers,
Colin