Saturday, March 18, 2006

Graham Update 3/18/06, part 2

Graham took a turn for the worse this evening and they had to insert a line to his heart by way of his umbilical cord. That said, more tests revealed his condition to not be as bad as we'd feared and there's a good chance that this is a "darkest before the dawn" sort of thing.

But if Graham doesn't start breathing well on his own, our hospital will have to start consulting with the specialists at Children's Mercy Hospital and there's a chance he'd need to be transferred there.

I can't begin to fully explain all of the scenarios the doctors are looking at. Graham was born pre-term but his lungs may or may not be premature – he may have just aspirated amniotic fluid. He's big for his age (by a couple of pounds), which is good, but that does have some drawbacks as well. There's a small chance that all of this could be something more serious (hence the need to consult the specialists) but everybody seems optimistic that he'll soon recover as most babies in his situation do.

As soon as he can breathe on his own in a normal crib and eat normally and meet a few other basic goals he can come home. Whether that is in the next few days or the next few weeks, nobody knows.

Please keep praying and thank you for your encouragement. Since Shannon has been dismissed, one or both of us will be home most of the time, so please call here first. Even if we're both at the hospital, whoever is watching the boys probably has the most up to date info.

My prayers for Graham tend to run along these lines right now.
  • Prayer for improvement before Sunday night, preventing a transfer to Children's Mercy and clarifying his situation.
  • Wisdom for the doctors. This isn't the kind of thing that a simple test reveals. Some things they just can't know for certain until after he recovers (or fails to recover).
  • Steady improvement so that he can come home in the next week.
  • Prevention/healing of any long term problems.

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