Week 19

9/10/2009

Friday Toby had an even worse day, full of big Braddys, the doctor put in an IV line in his left hand, just in case he didn’t come out of one, as he was having so many. His Doctor is pretty concerned about him at the moment and is thinking about doing a broncoscopy to see if anything is wrong with his throat or lungs, but he said that the equipment used will be to big to use on Toby and he will have to get bigger first. He is now 2430g. They are also trying to organize a MRI but that poses a problem as Toby will need to be sedated for this, which will compromise his breathing, and if he has one of his episodes while they are doing the scan, it will take some time to get to him, and then the pictures will be ruined, and they would have to start over again.  Also Toby’s inguinal hernia has gotten a lot worse and the surgeon wants to operate on it before it becomes strangulated, but that poses a big problem with the anesthetic too as Toby will most likely not handle one too well at the moment, so for now we are just hoping that he will settle down and get better. Daddy comes back down tonight, as we are all a little worried about him.

                       

11/10/2009

A lot better weekend, it seemed as though Toby recovered when the doctor put in his IV. It must have scared him.  He is still having a few little ones but so far they are not quite as scary as they were on Friday night. However his hernia is a lot worse. It will be interesting to see what happens this coming week.

12/10/2009

Not a good day today, Toby started to have some pretty big braddys at 6am and by 10am when the doctors came around he was not looking good. They started him on CPAP, and then he moved to a short nasal tube for CPAP through the ventilator which also delivered him 1 breath every 10 seconds as by this stage Toby was having apneas as well as braddys. This style of CPAP only lasted 10 minutes and he had another big braddy so His doctors decided that it was time to fully ventilate him. He was given lots of sedation and pain relief and intubated. The doctors think that he may have an infection so they took blood tests, and did a urine test, initially they did a bladder scan and tried to get the urine out using a little needle into his bladder, but this didn’t work so his doctor put in a catheter to get the sample. They also sent away a fecal sample and some CFS from a lumber puncture. They started him on heavy antibiotics, and did an ultrasound of his brain. The ultrasound was clear, but by the end of the night it was looking like he has a urine infection, and or an infection in his blood. He now safe on the ventilator and pretty well sedated. Daddy rushed back down from Burnie as we are all pretty worried about him today.

13/10/2009

Toby looks a bit better today; he has been given more sedation as he is trying to fight the ventilator. Which is a good sign as yesterday he didn’t have the energy to fight, however, we want him to rest and let the vent do the work for him so that he can get better so he has been sedated. His blood count is now low at 77, so the doctors have organized for him to have another blood transfusion today. His blood cultures and urine have shown the presence of infection but we will have to wait another day to see what grows. Also his CSF shows some white cells in it. This may be a concern for infection, but the doctors are not sure, as a newborn child could be expected to have some white cells in their CSF however as soon as they are out of the newborn period, and into the infant period they are not suppose to have any, and this can mean an infection in the CSF. The doctors are not sure if Toby fits into the Newborn or the Infant area, but he is on the strong antibiotics to cover him if it is an Infection. Mummy and daddy have also been told that the possibility of a urine infection may have been the cause of him having a rough time of it lately, as they can be brewing for some time before they show themselves. So hopefully when Toby gets better, his braddys settle down.