Third Week At Home

First, I want to apologize in not updating the blog sooner.  Life is moving very quickly for us.  Easter was a great time to spend at church and then later with family.  Our church is the only other place that he has been besides home or a medical facility.  It was encouraging to see brothers in Christ and to worship together.  We are thankful that we have a day set aside each year to remember what God has done for us.  

Zachary's stent check was last Thursday.  The docs said that they were most likely going to take out the stent.  When they sent the scope down his airway, they decided to leave it in.  The main reason is that there was no tissue granulation or tissue build up around the stent at this time.  The stent will continue to help his body grow and get big and chunky.  If there is no tissue granulation in two months, they will continue to leave the stent in for his next heart surgery.  The stent will allow his body to recover faster.  

The next heart surgery is the next major surgery.  The docs will do a heart catherization in a few weeks to check the pressures in his ventricle and his atrium (lower and upper chambers).  They will also check the pressure of his pulmonary artery (artery from the heart to the lungs and also known as the P.A.).  You may recall that the base of the PA is the site of the first heart surgery.  

Last night he was continuing to spit up, only it seemed like it was getting worse and worse.  We called the nurse hotline for PCH and called our personal medical advisors to decide what to do.  Our friends in the medical community said that we knew our baby the best and we would know if we needed to take him to PCH or not.  The nurses and resident encouraged us to bring him in just as a precaution.  We looked at his pulse ox and his breathing (etc. etc.) and decided to not take him to the ER.  If he had a temp (or showed other signs of infection) we would have taken him in to PCH.  

Please pray that God will give us the patience and wisdom to decide when Zachary needs the comfort of a parental hug or needs urgent medical care.  The hardest part about these last few weeks is trying to decide if what Zachary is doing is a normal baby thing or is a Zachary thing that should cause concern.  Sometimes it is hard to decide between the two.  

Here are pics of Zachary waiting for his bronchostopy last week.