Birthdays, even the monthly ones should be for celebrating, but today was no party.

It started out fun. Because the boys are five months old now and we were given the go ahead by the pediatrician, Trevor got to have his first sample of food other than breastmilk. We mixed him up some very soupy rice cereal! He did very well for his first time being spoon fed.

Then after his bath, he got a super cute crabby outfit and was feeling very talkative.

I headed to the hospital around 11:00am, and I walked in to chaos. Brendan totally failed his vent support weaning and his left lung had collapsed. He just was not ready to deal with the lack of pressure support with his floppy airway. This pretty much sealed the deal with him going to get his trach on Tuesday.
When they did a chest xray, they also saw fluid around his lungs and that always makes them nervous. He had an echocardiogram to make sure that his heart was working properly and that there was no fluid around his heart – which there was not, it all looked good.
What was found was that the atrial catheter/IV line that was placed during surgery had slipped back and was leaking fluid where it did not belong. The doctor told me that they may need to put in a chest tube to drain it off.
Because of the lung collapse and the fluid, the doctor strongly advised that they intubate Brendan today. She would rather do it now in a controlled environment while she was there to monitor him all day than to wait for him to have more of a crisis and need it in the middle of the night when he is in trouble. He would have been intubated tomorrow anyway for anesthesia for a CT scan that they are going to do. And then he would need it Tuesday for the tracheotomy, and after that it will be moot.
Intubation will help support his lung and allow them to help “reinflate”. Most importantly, it will be a secure airway that allows removal of the horrible cpap mask that was destroying his little face and nose. The chest xray afterwards already showed some improvement and they feel that a chest tube won’t be necessary.
So once Brendan heals from his trach and gets stable (3+ weeks), he should be able to come home to grow. We will have a long hard road ahead getting him stronger and healthier.

At least after intubation, Brendan’s color was better. With all the bruising from taking out the lines, the swelling in his face from the cpap straps and the damage it did to his skin, he looked like he had been in a brawl.

Add to the thrill today the fact that I almost lost all of the cute pictures from my camera card. A major reader error made me have to use a file recovery program to scan the camera card. I am glad it got my super cute video back!

Grandpa Jack is still in the hospital, we hope he will start to make some progress too.