The NICU Roller Coaster Ride begins

Well, we knew it would be a roller coaster ride, and so far it sure has been. Friday, Emerson was having trouble keeping his oxygen saturation up where it should be and was requiring more and more respiratory support. By the afternoon, they had switched him to an oscillating ventilator that is delivering 720 breaths per minute. We got a call in the evening that he was in critical condition. We decided that we would really like to have him baptized as soon as possible and made arrangements for a bedside baptism that night. The NICU staff was great and allowed us a few extra vistors at his bedside. Although he wasn't tolerating much of anything well that night (the nurse wasn't even changing his diaper so she didn't bother him.) he seemed to do quite well with three drops of sterile water dripped onto his forehead by syringe.

Things have stabilized somewhat. On Saturday, they did an ultrasound of his heart to confirm their suspicion that he had a PDA that didn't close properly. The PDA is a little connection between his heart and lungs. It is present in every baby before they are born, but typically closes and shuts off the connection within minutes after birth. For some reason, in many preemies, they don't close on their own. For Emerson it was contributing to the low oxygen saturations and was causing extra blood to pool in his lungs. Amazingly enough, there are medications they can give that will cause it to close. Emerson is on one called Indocin. Treatment is three doses of Indocin given 12 hours apart after first checking his kidney functioning before each dose. By Monday morning they should be able to tell if it has closed. Something like 80% of them will close with the first round of medication. If not, they can give up to three rounds of medication. If for some reason he isn't tolerating the medication, or it doesn't close on it's own after three rounds of meds, they will have to do surgery to close it. The surgery is actually done at his bedside and involves going in and inserting a little plug to block off the connection.

The doctors are very cautious and have told us that the next 4 days are very critical. His nurses, however, seem much more positive that this is very common and that they very well expect that it will close with one or two doses of medication.

Emerson is quite the fighter. They have had to sedate him because he has been trying to breathe over top of the ventilator (which down the road may serve him well but right now they don't want him doing it.) His bilirubin levels have also gone up (another one of those - to be expected things) and he is now taking his turn under the blue lights.

I know it is just the start of a long journey.