Tuesday, April 15, 2008

When you don't believe in the power of prayer or when you lose your faith, let me tell you a little story.

As I explained on Saturday, Hunter went in for emergency surgery because they thought he had a very serious condition called Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC). Infants that are born at Hunter's Gestation usually can't make it through such a critical illness. NEC will start to shut down the kidneys, heart, respiratory, and eventually shut down the entire body until the infant passes. With NEC, the stomach starts to bruise up, bloat, and you can see the bleeding inside out. On Saturday, the surgeons and neonatologist told me that we would have to wait 48-72 hours to see what was going to happen.

Yesterday, the surgeon from U of M visited Hunter. He was the one that did the emergency surgery. Hunter's heart rate is staying stable, he is still putting out good urine input (kidney's are working), his respiration is staying at low oxygen, and his stomach is remaining pink. His blood platelets are remaining good and his white blood count is starting to come down. All of these signs do not match NEC. The only way for sure that they would know if he had NEC is to open him up completely, take out his bowels, stretch his intestines out and look for damage. This is ridiculous and to much stress on the infants. Instead, they look for the other signs explained above. Although they treated him with NEC, by performing emergency surgeon - inserting a tube, and putting him on a high level of antibiotics; time is telling another picture. Instead, they think he has a condition called "isolated bowel perforation". This is a hole in his bowels or intestines that usually closes up on its own. The infant does not get as sick or critical as NEC, but it still is a very serious matter. Infants still get very sick and Hunter is not feeling well. Infants with isolated bowel perforation pull through more often than infants with NEC.

They will remain to treat him aggressively for the next week to 14 days. Then, they will start his feeds again. When they start his feeds again, we will need to worry about NEC once more. This is when NEC would show its ugly face.

They also did a chromosome test on Hunter. His white blood count was so high. This is normally seen in infants with Down syndrome. The chromosome test came back normal. Hunter DOES NOT have Down syndrome or trisomy 21. Thank goodness.

Please, Please, Please continue to pray. Hunter's #1 Physician is God. He is not out of the woods by any means.