Inching Forward

Sorry I didn't post an update yesterday. After I left the hospital I took Isabel to her ice skating class, came home and ate dinner, gave Isabel a bath and put her to bed, did 3 loads of laundry and sorted through our large stack of mail (a lot of things pile up when you have a child in the hospital). After that, I just didn't have the energy to post.

Thursday night I was pretty discouraged with some of the information we received regarding the MRI of Nathan's head. We learned that there is evidence on his brain that he has had mini-strokes. They can't be totally sure if this is new or was there before the MRI they took right before he had surgery. With the first MRI, they were more concerned with the abscess. During this MRI, they took different pictures. However, they are leaning toward this being something new. This was hard news for me to take but thankfully, on Friday, one of our cardiologists spoke with the neuroradiologist and they think that any damage would be reversible. Praise God!

Regarding the abscess, the MRI also showed that it has shrunk but they are not sure if it got even smaller than it is now and has grown larger or if it has continued to just get smaller. They will be doing another MRI on Monday to see what's going on. The neurosurgeon said that sometimes they need to drain the abscess more than once. Hopefully, it just continues to get smaller!

The echocardiogram didn't show there being anything additionally wrong with his heart so that's great news! His heart continues to be stable.

They have still been perplexed by his oxygen levels although they might have hit on something today. They have found that his hemoglobin has continued to go down since he's been in the hospital. This is because they keep taking blood from him for lab tests. They think that if they give him blood, that his hemoglobin will go up and therefore, maybe his oxygen levels will rise as well. They gave him some blood today and will monitor how things go. We are hoping that this is the answer! If this doesn't work, they will be taking a CT scan of his lungs to see if there is anything going on there. They did take an x-ray of his lungs and that looked good but a CT scan would give them better information.

I will let everyone know how things progress. Hopefully, no more update slacking in my future. :)