Friday, August 26, 2011

One Step Forward... Two Steps Back 8/26/2011

   Another tough week for little Grant.  Last Tuesday night his oxygen saturation dropped and stayed down for several minutes.  They had to put him on a ventilator to get it back up.  He has experienced occasional small "spells" like this before, however, the nurses were always able to get the numbers back up quickly.  This has caused some concern that his heart surgery may have to come sooner rather than later.  They are planning to do a heart cath next Tuesday to determine what is possible surgically to improve blood flow to his lungs.  Xrays of Grant's lungs have been very cloudy which typically means infection, pneumonia, or partially collapsed lung(s).  They do not think its infection or pneumonia since he has been on an antibiotic for several days (for his stomache infection).  We have to wait for his lungs to clear before they will do the heart cath.  They have started to turn/reposition him on more frequent intervals and a respiratory therapist comes by every 4 hours for PT (they smack him on the back and sides several times to loosen things up in his lungs.
   No way to know what the next steps are other than continued focus on his breathing, ween him off the ventilator, resuming his bottle feeding (after the breathing tube is out), and the heart cath on Tuesday.  They have a big Cardio team meeting on Wednesday to discuss each patient and Grant's results will be on the agenda.  Hopefully we will know something by the end of next week regarding when his surgery might take place.  Everyone believes it will ultimately take several surgeries to fix his condition and they would like to wait as long as possible.  If he continues to have problems with his oxygen saturation level, they will have to do something surgically now.
   There is some good news...  He is up to 6.3 lbs and at his last feeding, he was up to 35 ml which is just about the amount he should eat for his age.  We hope the breathing tube comes out tomorrow and he resumes bottle feeding.

More to come...

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