so much uncertainty

This picture is from last Tuesday. They let me hold him a day after they put his PDA stint in. It is always a treat to hold this little man. I have not been able to hold him since this pictue. Little Brig has a mind of his own now. Every time there is too much noise, or if they have to move him, all his alarms start beeping and his numbers/heart rate go crazy.I am so grateful for the times I do get to hold him. It is a privilege.

As far as how he is doing... From a cardiologist standpoint, he's pretty good. But for the past week he has been putting out a large number of fluid from his chest tubes (Chglous effusion). Normal is around 50 to 70 cc every twenty four hours, and Our sweet little man is putting out 530 cc. They can only put back 400 cc of fluid in. They doctors have been quite concerned because he is loosing plasma which carries all the nutrients such as proteins, white blood cells, fat and antibodies. He's starting to look a little too skinny. They were hoping it would start going away on its own, but he's shown no sign of improvement for the last week.

Today they decided to take him back down to the OR open him back up and look to see if there is a cut on the lymphatics. We are hoping and praying that this is the problem! If not we have to wait it out and see what happens. They were thinking of giving him a medication called Octreotide, but there hasn't been great reports with it and it doesn't come without its problems. The other option was to do a pleurodesis where they basically irritate the lung walls so they swell and then they would hope the lymphatics would restrict and therefor restrict the drainage. The reason they don't want to do this is because they would just be damaging lung tissue and his lungs are already pretty damaged. So today off to surgery again!

Our poor sweet little Brigham has been through the ringer. We know it's a process and we are hopeful everything turns out right. I love this boy so much. He's finally starting to wake up a little and it's really hard to hear he has to go back under and be cut open again.

Once again I ask for you to pray for Brig, pray that the doctors can figure this thing out. Thank you for all who have prayed in our families behalf. I can't say that enough. We have felt your love and prayers.