Back to Children's Hospital

Last week Elijah went through a series of tests and the results came back good! It was a long and draining day for all of us. We spent 8 hours at Children's Hospital with not a lot of down time as we got taken from appointment to appointment.

At first Elijah got a little excited which caused his heart rate to climb and he oxygen levels to dip. It was enough cause for concern for the nurse at our first appointment to contact a cardiologist specialist to make sure everything was OK. He had to get an X-ray taken of his chest/heart...which everything looked fine. They wanted to make sure it was fine before we went home not knowing if it was something worse.

His kidney exam came back more encouraging. The doctor thinks there is a blockage causing the back up of urine/waste and enlarging his left kidney. Originally the diagnosis was cystic. Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 25th, we are going back to Children's Hospital so the doctor can run a more extensive test on Elijah's kidney.

The hardest part of last week's trip was when Elijah had to get his chest X-ray. He had to be restrained with sandbags and masking tape so he doesn't squirm when they are taking the X-ray. This caused the boy to cry and scream hitting noise levels Michelle and I never heard. Michelle was about to break down and I almost started kicking the crap out of the entire nursing staff! It was tough to watch and listen too, and then we have a crying baby in a diaper and they are trying to get us to leave the X-ray room. So much for being tactful, we understand they have a schedule to keep, but come on!

We will find out more in October about his heart. We have some tests scheduled to tackle that issue next. Thanks again for everyone's support. Take care, we'll keep you posted.

Look how cute I am!!!

Yesterday Mommy was drying my hair after my bath......what fun!!!

Mommy changed out my nasal cannula(nose hose) the other day and took this picture of me. Since I am getting bigger and stronger I like putting my hands up to my face more and peel off the tape that holds the nasal cannula in place, so Mommy and Daddy are constantly changing it. Hehe!

S'up my peeps

The last couple of weeks we have visited Elijah's pediatrician and cardiologist. The visit with the pediatrician resulted in the doctor recommending Elijah not be placed in day care. He had some tests done while in the NICU that showed him having a weaker immune system than most.

The doctors main concern is if he were to catch the cold/flu from another child it could effect him even worse than most. We have to visit the immunology clinic down at Children's Hospital in Milwaukee and have him retested. We are hoping that since he has grown so has his immune system.

While we are at Children's Hospital we were to schedule a cardiac catheter procedure that they think would help figure out why he has high blood pressure in his heart. After numerous days of Steve playing phone tag with Children's Hospital, they finally got a hold of Steve to inform us that they have scheduled him for heart surgery. Elijah will still have some tests done locally to confirm that surgery is needed, but with scheduling so difficult we went ahead and got him schedule...we can, and hope, that appointment can always get canceled.

The plan is to have it scheduled when he is at least 6 months old which he will be in October. The plan is to go down there on a Thursday to get his labs done and then on Friday they would perform the surgery. The surgery caught us off guard, we know that it was a possibility but we weren't expecting him to have another surgery so soon. If this is going to correct the high blood pressure and allow us to get rid of the oxygen machine than that is what needs to be done.

His kidney's are doing good. The question is as he grows will his kidneys be able to process the increased amount of fluids as he gets bigger. This will be ongoing and something to monitor as he grows.

We also had to visit a Ear, Nose and Throat doctor to have Elijah's hearing retested. They tested him while he was in the hospital and he failed their test in his left ear. They think it may have had something to do with his narrow ear canals. He was retested and failed both. The doctor had suggested we wait and get him retested in 6-8 weeks or we can make the choice of having tubes placed in his ears. These tubes would help drain any fluid that may be in his ear. We are hoping his test was a false positive because he responds to our voices and noises around him... we will just have to wait and see.