Wherever you may go, no matter where you are, I never will be far away.

Pre-surgery

Been a while since Ive had a chance to post....its incredibly difficult to juggle all the different things going on in our lives...between trying to make sure Abbie doesnt feel neglected, and trying to spend as much time as possible with Rowan, we are stretched pretty thin...alot has happened since I last posted, and I will do my best to get it all in here in some sort of coherent order.

Post-surgery

Thursday morning, at 8:30 am, Rowan had surgery to place a reservoir in his head, to allow for the drainage of excess cerebra-spinal fluid thats causing too much pressure. He did great during the surgery, and recovered fairly quickly. He had a few instances where his heart rate dipped, but we think it was just the fentanyl hitting him all at once. He recovered on his own, so it was nothing to be concerned about. The neurosurgeon came to speak to us after the surgery. She isnt 100% sure that the reservoir is what he needed. While it will relieve the pressure by removing fluid, he still has the PVL (cysts around the ventricles in his brain) and she thinks that those might be whats causing him to have alarms. It's a waiting game. But so far he is doing really well, and hasnt really had any alarms at all. They will continue doing cranial ultrasounds on Mondays andThursdays, to monitor the PVL. We love our little guy no matter what obstacles he ends up having. He's overcome so much already, I'm sure he will surpass anyone expectations.

We were unable to go to the hospital for the past two days, due to other obligations we had at home. I was finally able to get back over there this afternoon. He looked like he doubled in size since I'd last seen him, although he had actually lost a bit of weight, which was expected due to the surgery and being off feeds for a full day. He's back to full feeds now, and will start getting the human milk fortifier again tomorrow.

He opens his eyes more now <3

The respiratory therapist also came to talk to me when I arrived today. He told me that as long as things go well tonight, they plan on taking Rowan completely off the high-flow tomorrow! Then the nurse came by and told me that Tuesday, they plan to take out his PICC line! So that means that all he will have is his feeding tube, and his leads for the monitor, and thats IT! so other than monitoring his head, he will basically be a feeder/grower! This is one of the most exciting things! Hopefully he does well off the air. AND hopefully they wont have any reason to put the PICC line back in...




We are heading back over to VT tomorrow late morning....staying the night and coming back Tuesday sometime. It will be nice to be able to spend some time over there and not have to worry about driving home in the dark. Driving + infected incision = not as much fun as i expected...But alas, it must be done...Still not sure how or when we wil be over here towards the end of the week. Jay works Friday, Abbie is off from school Friday....And I cant spend that much time away from Rowan. This past two days was difficult enough...I cant wait until he can just come home with us....