Procedure Day (for real this time)

Well, Toni did finally get his PDA closed this morning. We are so thankful to have it done and that he did well. His PDA was larger than the echo imaging had shown, but they were able to close it successfully. Since then he has been stable, but requiring more oxygen. He went in on 53% and is now at 70% and having trouble staying above 90% saturation. They told us before that he could have more issues post-op for a couple of days than he was prior to surgery, but I still hate to see it! We'll try to be patient and see how he does.

Toni also had his second 5 minutes of fame today. The first came when the CEO of the hospital and other higher ups asked one of our neonatologists if they could come see a "small baby." She told them that he would be a good one, this was back when he was 5 weeks old. Today WRTV Channel 6 News was following a radiology tech around because she was a Riley kid so he got to be filmed while they took his xray! So I'll be on the lookout for how to find that video. 


On the road to Cath Lab!

All done(:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

no more struggle

Image
I really hate that I have to write this update tonight.  Yesterday morning around 6:20am we got a call from the PICU, Tony was coding. We physically ran to the hospital. By the time we got there he had been coding for probably 10 minutes. They told us he got upset, probably trying to poop, and his oxygen saturation dropped. Then his heart rate went with it. They tried to use the ambu bag to give him breaths instead of the vent and couldn't get his airways to open back up. After probably 30 minutes of chest compressions they decided to try to put him on ECMO. That's a machine that basically does the work of the heart and lungs for a time. At first we said okay, but after seeing how long it was taking to get started, knowing that he had been without much oxygen to his brain for more than 30 minutes, I started telling them that I didn't think we should proceed. They agreed that there was almost no chance that his brain was being perfused most of the time they had been doing CP
Read more

PICU boy

Image
What a week. After Antonio's first trach change we spent the weekend getting him up in his little chair, holding him, and trying to do some tummy time. He was still very sedated, so he slept through most of it, but it was good for him and fun for us! We even saw Santa on Tuesday! He was having some issues with breathing hard when he would wake up, so we tweaked his vent settings back up. They had made some adjustments last Thursday and Friday because he was doing too good on his blood gasses, probably because he was super sedated. So all week they worked on weaning him down and messing with the vent. Tuesday morning we heard from a pulmonologist that she suspected that we would move to PICU within 24-48 hours. Everyone else said no beds were available. Wednesday we heard we were moving, then nevermind we aren't, then wait yes you are, and finally about 6pm they said we weren't. So we had packed everything up, only to have to dig some of it out to take care of him yesterday.
Read more

due date week

Image
This week flew by. Tuesday we hit a major goal, his oxygen requirement finally got down into the 30s. We haven't seen that number since the week before his PDA closure early September. That's huge. I thought it might be a fluke, but he has continued to at least touch the 30s each day since. The lowest being 33% on Wednesday. The problem is that every evening we have to inch back up into the 50's, which makes every evening feel not so great. But, it's still amazing to see that kind of solid improvement each day.  Last weekend I stumbled upon the fact that there is a unit at Nationwide Hospital in Columbus, OH, that is entirely dedicated to babies with BPD. They claim to have 99% survivability and focus on neuro development just as much as the respiratory side of things. I was shocked, I had no idea that a place like that existed. Monday I asked our provider to reach out to them for a second opinion, I had to know if they would do anything differently for him because it f
Read more