Update on Luke

Today was a good day.

Luke is off the vent AND off the nasal oxygen tube. He's resting well and let me touch him earlier today. He'd been getting very upset and having minor episodes with his breathing with any stimulation last night and this morning, so letting me touch him without freaking out was a big deal. After all he's been through the last 24 hours, I can't blame him. I wouldn't want anybody touching me either.

As we've mentioned on Facebook today, after having a CT scan of his brain last night they found that he did have a bleed. The doc believes it is between the brain and the skull and not IN the brain, which is good. They also said his blood count hadn't changed today, leading them to believe it's clotted and not still bleeding. They will be doing another CT to confirm that, hopefully that will be tomorrow. The doc also said he wanted to consult with a neurologist to make sure they were on the right track and a hematologist from UMMC to see if there were any other tests they should be running to look for a possible blood condition that could have caused the trauma.Both of those will hopefully happen tomorrow. Right now they have no idea how it happened. Normally they only see this kind of thing with difficult deliveries or situations where suction is needed during the delivery, all of which would have applied to Kaycie and none of which apply to Luke... Neither the neonatologist nor my OB can explain it; they're a bit baffled.  Nothing happened during the birth that should have caused a brain bleed.

So now what? Well, we wait. I'm hoping they'll get to talk to all the consults tomorrow and let us know what they think before I'm discharged, but preliminary discussions lead us to believe they haven't seen anything that would provide any additional answers yet. If he's tolerating stimulation a little better tomorrow I should (fingers crossed) get to hold him. Hopefully by Saturday they should have the cultures back on the infection tests (precautionary) and be able to rule those out and take him off antibiotics. Eventually they will be able to take out his IV and other tubes and move him to one of the glass rooms so we can be a little more comfy. They're still waiting for him to show an interest in eating so they can try to feed him, but he's getting what he needs through his IV in the meantime. He has to figure out the feeding thing before he can go home, but that's not a major concern right now. He's resting well which is more important for the healing process right now. The best news from the doc today was that as long as the bleed has stopped and dissolves itself, we shouldn't see any long term effects.

Meanwhile, I'd like to point out that my son is already acting like his Uncle Bill. He was more or less arrested by the cops for mischief last night. When they took him to the CT they forgot to remove his security band (which we call the LoJack) and set off the baby-theft alarm. Security ended up having to escort him all the way to the CT, wait on him, and escort him back to his bed before they could turn the alarm off. Yes, this started at 11pm and took about 40 minutes. I'm sure the other guests here were loving us last night!

I'd also like to say that the staff at Baptist has been awesome. They've taken excellent care of me and Luke. The first person to come in and tell us there was a problem was the nurse from the transition nursery. She walked in and immediately remembered us from when she had us in childbirth class two and a half years ago when I was pregnant with Kaycie. She was concerned but calm as she told us that there were some issues and he had been taken to the NICU. This morning we found out that after she went home she called back up here to check on him a couple of times and had gone to see him before she checked on us first thing. We also found out that Luke had her in tears when he kept having episodes and they were having trouble reviving him. Three more times last night we had an update from either the NP or the neonatal doc, who they called to come back in and stayed to check on Luke's tests. From the time they told us there was a problem, around 7pm, it took about 4 hours for them to run enough tests and come back to us with a probable cause and a plan. And when we went in to see Luke this morning they told us that my OB had already been by to check on him as well. My poor nurse today was very concerned and checked on him numerous times. These people have been seriously worried about getting my little boy better!