Doing pretty good...

Sorry it has taken awhile to write an entry, but we have just been exhausted these last few days...

Anyway, to get you caught up, the surgery went fairly well as the doctor added 460 more shots of laser and 6 shots of cryotherapy in the left eye. He did not do anything new to the right eye because there was still more bleeding in that eye. The eye doctor examined his eyes today and he is certain that he needs to go back in for more surgery into Matthew's right eye before two weeks is up. He needs to remove the lens in that eye because it did cloud up after he nicked it and now it is almost a full blown cataract. Apparently, if he removes the lens, Matthew will still be able to see out of the eye but not very well. They will replace the lens with a synthetic lens but that could be anywhere from 6 months to 3 years down the road before they do that. The doctor also said that if babies can't see out of an eye, e.g. a clouded lens, then their brain will shut down and never use it so it is better to remove the lens so they will continue to use the eye even if it is not great vision. The doctor also mentioned that with all the surgeries and cryotherapy in the left eye, it is also likely to develop a cataract and the lens may need to be removed from that eye as well. He is also confident that the left eye is 99.9% good, however, during the eye exam today he noticed a blood vessel shaped like a tornado in the vitreous fluid. He doesn't know what it is, but he is going to keep an eye on it.

After the surgery, Matthew stayed intubated for a day or so, then he went onto CPAP. However, today at 11:00 a.m., they took him off of CPAP and put him on nasal cannula and he seemed to be doing fairly well. As of 11:00 p.m., he was still on the cannula.

After the surgery, Matthew was having more bleeding ulcers in his stomach because of the stress he's been under so they started him on zantac in his IV nutrition. They were getting blood and bile on continuous suction for a day or so. On Friday of last week, they tried to start his feeds again at a very small amount, but they were getting a lot of residual with unusual color so they stopped. However, today they started up his feeds again at 3 ml's every 3 hours at 6:00 pm. As of his second feeding at 9:00, he tolerated it really well, no residuals, no bile or unusual color. We were going to try to put him to the breast today while they fed him through the tube to get him used to associating my breast with food. This is called recreational nippling or recreational breastfeeding and this is sometimes successful but most of the times it is not. Preemies usually don't know what to do when they are put to breast because they are so used to having tubes in their mouths that when they are put to the breast, they don't have the instinct to start sucking. I am hoping that with time and a lot of work, I'll be able to breastfeed him. When it was time to feed Matthew today, he was getting really tired, so we didn't put him to the breast, but we did put a drop of breastmilk on his tongue and he seemed to swallow it okay and enjoy it. Then with me holding him, we fed him the rest of the milk through a tube. He was fast asleep shorter after the feeding stopped.

Matthew has had multiple blood transfusions recently and with all the medications he has been on, he started to retain a lot of fluid. So they started him on Lasix to help him urinate out some of the fluid. At one point he was over 6 pounds, but as of last night he was back down and is now weighing 5 pounds 13 ounces which is probably closer to his true weight.

He is still receiving antibiotics for a lung infection and an infection in his bladder but they should stop those sometime this week.

He is still at Stanford and will probably be there for a few more weeks because of the upcoming surgeries.

Please continue to pray for Matthew and us and for all the other babies in the NICU that are undergoing other kinds of surgeries and problems.