The good, the bad, and the unknown

First the good news...Since Matthew is starting to grow, the tube that has been inside of his trachea (aka: endotracheal tube) has become too small for him so they needed to put in a larger one. But instead of doing that right away, they decided to try him out on the CPAP once again. (For review about CPAP see the entry on June 27th) He was put on CPAP at 1:00 pm and at 7:30 pm he was still on it and he seemed to be doing fairly well. The chest x-ray in the afternoon came back showing that the lungs were not as collapsed as they were in the morning when he was on the ventilators. They have him on about 60% oxygen and even though things look good now, they tell us not to be surprised if he gets too tired to continue breathing on his own and ends up back on the ventilators by tomorrow. We've been here before and know that every hour or day off the ventilators is better for his lungs in the long run and it's another step forward.

The bad news is that the feeding didn't go well at all. Absolutely none of my breastmilk that they fed him moved through his digestive system. As a matter of fact they even saw some blood when they were checking the "residual" stuff in his stomach. The blood could be due to some irritation of the feeding tube in his stomach or it could be due to stomach ulcers. They are currently giving him some Zantac via the IV to help take care of this problem. So for now the feedings have been discontinued until further notice.
In addition to this, the blood work for Matthew came back a little unusual this morning so they started him on antibiotics again. They are thinking there may be another bacterial infection, but are unsure what kind it can be. They really can't figure out what is going on because some of the results show there are signs of infection and some of the results show that there are no signs of infection. There is nothing growing in any of the cultures they have done for either the bacteria or the fungus, (although growth can take several days or even up to a week to grow) but they are giving him antibiotics for today and will do more blood work in the morning to see if it is working. He is on two antibiotics and unfortunately one of them is called Vancomycin, which is generally used as an absolute last resort to kill off any bacteria. If he ever becomes resistant to Vancomycin, this can become a huge problem down the road, so pray that he doesn't become resistant and that he doesn't need to be on it very long.

Now for the unknown...Well, the little guy just can't seem to get rid of the bilirubin levels in his blood. For more information about bilirubin levels and the side effects of it being to high, click here. The director of the NICU was assigned to Matthew today and he has called in a specialist to come and take a look at what is going on because all the doctors are stumped. The doctors just can't figure out what is going on. It appears that none of the test results they are getting makes sense with the kinds of levels they are seeing with him. The ultrasounds and x-rays don't show any abnormalities with his liver, but there are some diseases that can be causing this problem. Please pray that a solution to this bilirubin mystery can be found and that there aren't any serious complication or side effects to this.