News

It has been a loooong day.  Cooper had a chest x-ray last night.  It just showed more of the same- junk in his lungs.  At least we're on pulmonary team and they finally seem really serious about getting rid of that stuff.  He is not going to eat for 3 months.  Nothing.  No solids, no bottles.  Nothing.  We're going to get him exercises to do in the meantime so he doesn't loose all of his eating ability.  He had an EEG this morning, since he hasn't had a seizure in 2 and a half months.   This has nothing to do with why he is currently in the hospital, but since he's here, his neurologist wanted it done.

This afternoon was the big thing.  The pulmonary team wanted him to get a heart echo to make sure he didn't have pulmonary hypertension (he doesn't).  While they were doing that, they discovered he still has a patent ductus arteriosus.  Here is Brad's explanation of that:

A patent ductus arteriosus, or PDA, is a connection between the pulmonary artery and the aorta. This connection is normal in a fetus that is in the womb.  Once the baby is born the ductus closes with the infant's initial breaths.  In some children the ductus does not close.  The end result is increased blood flow in the pulmonary vasculature and the left side of the heart.

Ok, I'm back.  Cooper had this at birth.  He had an echo when he was a few days old that showed this, but we were told it was really small and would go away.  Obviously, it never did.  So, the cardio people are going to put a coil into the hole so that the heart tissue scars around the hole, sealing it up.  If you know anything about my mom's aneurysm, it is similar to what she had done.  They can't do that until his lungs are ready for anesthesia.  And they can't do any other surgery (including the hypospadias repair) until they fix the hole.  This is because if the surgery caused a blood infection, it could get into his heart through that hole and cause major problems.  So glad we've already had 2 surgeries with this (sarcasm, people!).

So that is where we are now.  Cooper is still in the hospital.  He's good on one liter of oxygen.  Now that all his major procedures are done, we'll start weaning him off the oxygen.  No idea when he'll go home.  More later!