Trying to Put Yesterday Behind Us

We spoke to Dr. Grubbs last night. He's doing fine on his oxygen and his feeds and his intestines are looking good. He weighed in at 2 lbs 7.2 oz. His chest x-ray looked good. Dr. Grubbs said he had pretty normal looking lungs. Then he proceeded to list off a bunch of nasty sounding things that they look for on chest x-rays that Beckett does not have. It was nice to hear that he didn't have any of that stuff.

But the big news was about his head ultrasound.

Last week he was diagnosed with a Grade 2 bleed. There was some blood entering the ventricle on the right side of his brain. But there was no swelling (Grade 3) and there was no blood entering the brain tissue (Grade 4).This week they determined there was no additional bleeding, so he still has just a Grade 2 bleed. Yay! But they also noticed that the ventricles enlarged. That was exactly what we did not want to hear. They measured the percentage of his brain's width that was taken up by the ventricles. It went from 38% (last week) to 44% (this week). For some reason he said that even though there is swelling it is still classified as a grade 2 bleed. I'm not sure why it's not classified as a Grade 3 bleed since the defining characteristic of a Grade 3 bleed is the swelling of the ventricle. But I am glad that it's not a Grade 3 bleed.

He went over the possibilities if the swelling progresses. Once the percentage gets to 50% - 60% they put in a shunt (drain) so the fluid can drain out and the swelling will stop progressing. That means they basically drill a hole from the outside of his brain all the way into the ventricle. If the swelling progresses slowly then they will put in a permanent shunt that drains into his abdomen. Since its permanent they have to coil up the tube in the abdomen so that it will have room for him to grow. If the swelling progresses quickly then they will put in a temporary shunt that drains to a bag outside his head. The nurses will periodically remove fluid from the bag. Then after he's grown a bit bigger they'll put in the permanent shunt. We really don't want a shunt. Please pray that the swelling will stop so he doesn't need a shunt. Of course we also don't want him to have neuromuscular delays.

It seems a little odd to me that Tuesday and Wednesday I was telling everybody at work how great he has been doing. Then we get this news and all of a sudden it doesn't seem so great. We're worried about Beckett. We know that we can trust God and we know that His protection is over us. But this is scary and we don't like it.