Fri. Jan. 11th Another Conference/Stroller Outing

We hope you enjoy the pictures. The first picture is his normal smiley self. He loves flashing us a cute smile a lot now. He's getting pretty wiggly too. He sits up better with assistance and looks around a lot and reaches with his hands and kicks his feet. He's just getting busier and busier every day.
The next pictures are of an outing we took around the NICU. One of his primary nurses "Barb", started discussing how Luke could get to take a stroll earlier this week and with much planning, today was the big day. Luke in our stroller, along with daddy taking pictures and pushing the portable monitor, along with nurse Christi pushing his O2 tank and the respiratory therapist pushing his nitric tank we made a parade walk around the unit. Luke at first was fussy being tired and eventually fell asleep (just what his big brother did in the stroller). I think Jeremy and I had more fun than he did, it was just great having him out of his room, even if it was for 15 minutes.

We've been talking to Luke's specialist this week and today had a conference going over every angle of his Pulmonary Hypertension (PPHN) and lung disease. We also got to talk to the heart surgeon and the Cardiac Catheter specialist. It really helped answer all our questions and get a clearer picture of why this is needed right now. One thing that helped me was to learn how PPHN is a silent disease. The baby (or adult too) can look perfectly normal on the outside, but have this awful life threatening problem brewing on the inside. If we wait for Luke's condition to deteriorate before acting on this procedure, the effects of his PPHN would most likely be irreversible. His prognosis wouldn't be good. By doing this procedure now, when he's strong, he would have a better chance of overcoming his lung disease that is causing his PPHN and he'll recover more easily from the procedure. Still tough since if the Cardiac Catheter doesn't work, then they will have surgeons standing by to do open heart surgery. The open heart surgery for this condition (closing that little hole) is one of the oldest and standard heart surgeries they do on babies. Luke would recover in the PICU, a unit upstairs especially for babies recovering from this type of surgery. It would be about one week before he could return to his room in the NICU. It is a much slower recovery than the Cardiac Catheter procedure, so we just pray that he won't have to have the open heart surgery.

It's been a tough day, but good too with getting all our questions answered and topping it off with the stroller ride. Luke is truly an amazing baby. He has such a hefty illness, but is such a happy and social baby.

We appreciate all your prayers, they really are guiding us through this tough journey with Luke.

Melinda