BREAK OUT

This is a favorite of ours...Elijah has had enough of the hospital and is looking to breakout of his crib!

BACK HOME

Elijah was back home on Thursday, March 18th. He had a 2 week stay at Children's Hospital, this time cleaning out an infection he got from his heart surgery. It had been 3 months since his heart surgery, and such a long time before his infection to show.

We had noticed his chest scar becoming red and swollen, but after a couple of days puss pockets began to form on the surface. He already had some follow up appointments scheduled at Children's Hospital the week this took place, so it worked out the best possible way. The doctors looked at it and got him into day surgery right away.

Sadly, the doctors had to reopen Elijah's chest cavity to be completely confident they got rid of the infection. Amazingly, the kid was himself a day or two after surgery. We do have to give him antibiotic treatments for the next month at home to make sure the infection is gone. Its another step, but its better to do this and have him home than for him to be at the hospital.

Hard to believe, on the 25th Elijah will be 11 months old...1 month away from his 1st birthday!

Scar Infection

Over this past week the scar from Elijah's heart surgery started to swell up and become infected. He is 3 months removed from his heart surgery so the timing of this is strange. Doctors have told us this could have been brewing for a while and just found its way to the surface now. Elijah never ran a fever and it never seemed to bother him, unless you poked at it.

Seeing that we were already at Children's Hospital we had a doctor look at Elijah's scar. To the doctors credit they had shuffled around the schedules to get Elijah in to take some further tests and x-rays. The conclusion to all this was they wanted to get him into day surgery and take care of the infection.

During about an hour in surgery, the doctors decided to open his chest cavity to make sure they clean out as much of the infected area as possible. As frustrating as it was to hear this, it was the best posssible way to treat it. Elijah is doing great and resting comfortably. We were told he would be here for about a week.

The timing, as strange as it seems, worked out best because we would have needed to come back to Children's. We wouldn't have been able to get the care and treatment needed for this is Green Bay. Michelle and I are doing fine. Its frustrating, but it needed to get done. We are hoping for a speedy recovery, and can't wait to get everyone back home...again!

SLEEP STUDY

Elijah's sleep study went well. If you're not familiar with sleep studies, you can see in the picture all the stuff he was hooked up too. There is a team of nurses that monitor his sleep patterns throughout the night on a monitor and always recording his breathing, heart rate, and brain waves.

Elijah managed to sleep through the night so the sleep lab will have enough information for their report. They did have Elijah on just room air which we were told he did fine on. This test will help the doctors to determine if we are able to get rid of his oxygen...even though he is only on 1/2 liter.

Although Elijah seemed comfortable during the test, it was a different story for Michelle and I. We were crammed in a 12 x 12 room, but at least we could all be together. Originally we were told only one parent could stay overnight, while the other would be forced to a hotel.

While Elijah did great in the sleep study, Michelle and I did great with our NO sleep study of our own!