Ian's surgery

On Friday, Ian was transferred to another hospital for surgery to his abdomen due to the NEC (necrotizing enterocolitis) getting worse. He had surgery that night. the surgery results were bad. When they got in there, they found that all of his intestines had been fused together by the infection into one large mass. Every time the surgeon tried to separate them, they fell apart (he said they were like wet tissue paper). He found almost 1ft of intestine at the base of the stomach that he routed to the abdominal wall (jejunostomy) and routed the other end portion to the abd wall as well (mucosal fistula). Then, he closed him up. Now we have to wait and see if his body will heal teh intestines and strengthen them so that in about 2 months, they can try surgery again to separate them. Until then, he'll not be able to be fed anything. If they are able to fix his intestines in 2 months, they will do so. If the damage is so severe, that it cannot be separated, then the only option would be a bowel/liver transplant. The surgeon says this is new and not quite perfected yet, so we'll pray his lil intestines heal well and are able to be fixed. It's so scarey to not know what may come ahead.

During the night after the surgery he was was having low blood pressures and his blood gasses were coming back bad and they had him at very high settins on the oscillator (a type of ventilator). I stayed until 4am saturday morning with him, then came home to catch a couple hours of sleep. (This nicu will not allow you to fall asleep in a chair at the bedside, or stay anywhere in the hospital). I got home and went to bed, then received a phone call around 9am from Ian's doctor. He said "we've been working on ian for quite some time now trying to get his oxygen levels up and his blood gasses up, and his blood pressure will not come up either. We have him on 2 meds to increase his blood pressure and are giving fluids but it's not coming up. I am going to give an albuterol treatement to see if that will help open up his lungs but i don't think it's going to help and i do not forsee a good outcome. I don't think he will make it much longer". I jumped out of bed and we raced to the hospital. I called the neonatologist on the way there and asked "can't you try nitric oxide" to which he replied "i guess maybe we could try some". We go to the hospital and ian was in very poor shape. They started the INO (nitric oxide) and slowly his oxygen levels began to rise. Over the course of the day it was a struggle to keep them up and to get his blood pressures up. The dr's then put him on an epi drip to help with his blood pressure and it immediately made an improvement. The blood gasses remained poor but he was still alive!!! I stayed around the clock and fell asleep in the chair for a couple of hours (which is against the rules, but that nurse didn't kick me out *smile*). They say he was in shock from the surgery.

Sunday his blood gasses began to improve, his blood pressure remained stable with the 3 meds.

Monday: They weaned the Nitric oxide completely off! His blood gasses were beautifully normal! His blood pressure stayed perfect and they even stopped 2 of the 3 b/p meds. He's stabilizing out!!!

Tuesday: He remains stable!!! He's now off of all b/p meds and holding his own! His blood gasses are staying perfect and they are weaning down his oxygen and his oscillator settings. He's also now off of the paralytics (to keep him paralized while he stabilizes). Today he is moving his lil arms and legs around a bit and he even opened his eyes and looked around occasionally. (as much as he could because he's still very swollen). They have gotten a lil over 2lbs of fluid off of him in 2 days now!! He's was swollen huge and he's still very swollen but nothing like he was saturday and sunday. They took the catheter out tonight and he's still urinating well so far. Here's praying our lil man keeps on getting better!

Please continue to pray for Ian to heal and get better! I appreciate all of you already praying for him. Thank you for everything!