Wiggly Red Line

Hi all,

So yesterday was bad.  Yesterday we found out that this wasn't something as simple as Meconium aspiration.  The mystery was in the left ventricular of his heart.  Hi mother might have explained this well in her post but, let me restate the puzzle.  When he was born they were pretty sure that it was Meconium aspiration and in order to protect his brain they started cooling him.  His blood pressure seemed healthy and everything was good except for the Meconium.  After they got him to the NICU they noticed that his left ventrical wasn't really doing anything.  This made almost no sense because he had a blood pressure.  This was also before they put him on the ECMO.  After they hooked him to it they did and an echocardiogram.  This confirmed that something wasn't going right.  This is not normal for Meconium aspiration. In fact its not normal for anything.  So here are a bunch of small bits of data.

• They stopped the cooling process yesterday morning.
• This in turn got him to process more CO2.
• That made his blood more acidic
• Around 3 pm yesterday the ECMO operator decided to increase the volume of air effectively "blowing off CO2"
• This lowered his acidity
• So he started urinating again
• His pulse went back to something normal
• So that's good
• His kidneys work great and his liver works great
• This doesn't make much sense because if he was going through severe trama his body would sacrifice those systems before the heart
• He is really puffy because he is retaining water. 
• He looks very muscular and a little bit like the state puff man  
• They gave him some Immunoglobulin sometime around 1 am last night because this could be a virus on his heart.
• The test results for viruses haven't come back yet
• His heart structure looks fine
• Actually all of his structures look fine

Here is his xray

So we went to bed somewhat stressed even more than normal.  We didn't really know which way this was going but, we knew we were just stuck waiting.

Now a little good news!

This morning we were greeted by this.

Which looks vastly better than this

Let me explain.  That little red line shows his arterial flow.  Notice that in picture 2 it is almost flat.  That means his left ventrical was almost doing nothing.  Now go back and look at the first picture.  That means his heart is coming back online.  Maybe its was the Immunoglobulin, maybe it was prayers, maybe it was the Colostrum that his mom has been pumping and they swabbed his mouth with.

But, this is good.

Other good things

• They haven't added any more saline or blood to the ECMO
• This means that his capillarity leaks have stopped.
• That means no hemoraging 
• All of the scans have shown things to be quite normal including his brain.

So this is good.  Yeah, I know we are way at the bottom of the valley of bad right now but, its the little things that give you hope.  Anyway, I hope things just keep improving.  I don't really care why it happened.  But, he seems to be pulling it back together.  

Here are some more pictures of him

Here is one of his hand showing how puffy he is

And here is a video of his sister running around in a chicken costume to cheer everyone up.

I hope to tell you more good news later.