An Acute Life Threatening Event

I know Michael posted a quick update on Isaac’s condition that he wrote earlier today, but I just wanted to give a quick update on what the doctor said about Isaac today.

As Michael mentioned earlier, he and I spent a good day in the NICU with Isaac today – he was breathing much better today than he was when he had that episode of difficult breathing while we were there last night. And it was really nice to be able to hold him a lot today and feel like he was doing better. We spent the whole day there with him, and later on in the afternoon the doctor who performed his surgery the other day came to talk to us and answer any questions we had.

Last night when Isaac had the trouble with his breathing, we knew that it must be kind of serious, since there were all of a sudden 8 medical staff in the room. But it didn’t take them too long to give him the oral airway, which resolved the problem pretty quickly and relaxed his breathing a lot.

So, when the doctor came in to talk to us this afternoon and he called what happened to Isaac last night an “acute life threatening event” we were both a little shocked. We knew it was serious, but we had no idea it was that serious. The doctor said that the problem last night was not directly related to the surgery or the anesthesia, and said that their best diagnosis was that the problem last night was caused by reflux, especially since it happened shortly after the nurse tried to feed Isaac a little milk yesterday. We knew that they had given him two different medicines and they said that those would aggressively treat the reflux. When I asked the doctor if the reflux was going to be an ongoing problem for Isaac, I was also surprised to hear that he will continue on both of the reflux medications for 18 months to make sure that he doesn’t have another similar episode like last night.

We asked if the doctor had any idea when Isaac might be ready to go home, (since the original estimate had been that he might be ready to go home today or tomorrow, but we could tell he wasn’t ready for that). The doctor would not give us an estimate, since he said that he couldn’t predict hot Isaac would do in the future. But he did give us some idea when he said that they plan to wait until Isaac is off of all the tubes, the oral airway, the IV, the monitors, and until he is nursing like normal, and then watch him for 48 to 72 hours to make sure that he can do well without any of those extra things before they will send him home. So, we don’t really know how long it will be, but I would guess maybe that it will be another week before we can bring him home from the NICU, as long as there are no more setbacks.

So, it was good to get some more information about his condition, and although we’d love to have him home with us now, we are glad that they are going to be thorough and make sure that he is fully recovered before letting him go. We are glad that he seems to be doing so much better today, and please keep him in your prayers so that he will not have any more setbacks and he can recover quickly. Thank you!