04/23/2007

Now, about Emery. I talked to Dr. A today and he explained several things to me. First, Emery's ROP has advanced to pre-plus disease so they are trying to keep him oxygenated better. There was a multifacility study called "STOP-ROP" and there was some suggestion that better oxygenation actually helped heal the irregular growth of blood vessels. They aren't going to do too much weaning this week, though they did go down on his pressures from 26/16 to 25/15 because that's really no difference. His blood gases are great and his chest x-ray is great, but they just want to see if he has some healing in his eyes before they make any dramatic changes. I guess his retinae are still very premature. He said Emery is pretty far behind in the maturity department. Even though he has grown well his retinae still haven't matured. Also, I finally got to talk to him about Emery's reflux and he's having the nurses watch him and he will get started on meds if it continues to be a problem like it was this weekend. He's been throwing up fairly regularly now for 3 days. He is having residuals (which he has never had), and he hasn't had a bowel movement in over 72 hours. He's had 2 glycerine slivers. The docs do know about it but said that term babies don't always have bowel movements every 24 to 72 hours so they aren't overly concerned with it, but he is being watched closely. Dr. A is now the primary doctor for Emery and NP team works with his plan now, so that's a good thing. Concerning the social worker, I haven't heard back on that yet. A strange event happened today. The insurance company called and actully asked me how Emery was doing. Believe me, I want him out of there as bad as they do, but an interesting development occurred. We might not have to move to Iowa. We still have to move, but we may not have to leave the state. She did suggest we move to Iowa and get covered under title 19 for Emery's sake, but Erik has union insurance and once we top out on mine I have to find out if we can put Emery on his. If that's the case we might get to stay. That would be nice. Yes, I am still struggling. As I watched Emery writhing in pain while vomiting with his feeds and crying I kept telling the nurse. The thing is, I don't know. The nurse today made a point to tell me that Emery isn't a 'preemie' anymore. He's acting like a term baby, but I don't know what it's like to have A baby, let alone a sick one, so I don't know. All of you have said that I am Emery's parent, his advocate, but man it gets very tiring telling each person about his history. So that's why I called Dr. A. He's now aware of all of these strange little things going on, and he did go down and look at Emery today and said he looks really good and healthy, and he reminded me that they will know when something is wrong. I did ask if not weaning him any more on his pressures (the original plan was to wean two a week) would keep him there longer, and he said (in typical Dr. A style) "he's not going home next week anyway so it's okay." I like the way he reassures me. He keeps things in perspective. And, most of my fears here lately honestly stem from an event that never even existed anyway. So, that's all that's new on Emery. He got held by Aunt DeeDee on Saturday, Grandma Jo on Sunday and Grandma Sherry today. Grandpa Larry held him last week so Emery's meeting his family well and really enjoying it.