Hello Old Friend

Our little man has had a few crummy days since his femur broke. On Thursday night Landon had more and more difficulty breathing. We feared the combination of pain and his increased need for morphine was making it too hard for him to breathe on his own. (Morphine is known to slow breathing in babies.) Friday morning our fears were confirmed with an early morning phone call from Landon's doctor, Dr. Scott, letting us know he had to be put back on his old friend the ventilator. The doctors also put him on antibiotics for the small chance that his trouble breathing was due to another infection and not pain. Our hope was that he would only need to be put on the ventilator for a few days while we got his pain under control. The worst part of this is that the doctors decided not to feed him breast milk yet. This was incredibly frustrating as getting fed is the only thing that would help his bones to get stronger to prevent future fractures.

Although we were upset over this latest setback, we figured it was only a few days we lost. Unfortunately on Saturday morning we had another morning call from one of Landon's residents, Dr. Dusty. The small chance that he had another infection had become a reality as his blood pressure dropped, his kidneys began to stop working, and his white blood cells increased. Thankfully, he was already on antibiotics, but he needed to be put on blood pressure medicines to bring his blood pressure up. He also had to receive blood. Anytime a baby needs to be on blood pressure medicines for infection, it is a pretty scary time.

Thankfully, just a small amount of the medicine worked to raise his blood pressure and he began to urinate again. This was good because they had stopped giving him the nutrient rich fluid when he stopped urinating the night before. This is because his kidneys couldn't handle the filtration of that fluid at the time. The downside to that was another day without the nutrients like calcium that Landon needs to heal his bone. Once he began to urinate he was able to get that fluid once again. Another side effect of not urinating is that he swelled up nearly a pound bigger than he normally was. We had a mini sumo wrestler baby again!

The doctors haven't decided how long he will need to be on antibiotics since they cannot tell where the source of the infection is yet. They don't think it is in his belly, though it may be possible that bad bacteria from the last infection in his belly got into other parts of his body. Now it is just a waiting game to hope he continues to get better. Today he was able to make it most of the day without morphine and needed no blood pressure drugs. He continues to urinate and is slowly shrinking from his sumo wrestler state. We hope to get him off of the ventilator again by the end of this week since Friday starts a new month with new doctors. We continue to pray for patience and faith in God's plan that there is a reason for these 'speed bumps' and we will one day take him home where he belongs.