Thursday, August 7, 2008: A whirl mill of emotions

Last night was pretty tough for Karl and I. We took turns sitting by Luke through the night. Karl took the first shift until 2am then Lulu until 5am. Luke was definitely having some problems. All his numbers were going down, rather than up. His O2, which originally was great, were getting worst. The nurse practitioner talked with the doctor on call and they decided to put Luke on a morphine drip in order for him to get relaxed. He was getting over stimulated and not allowing himself to get relaxed and let the medicine or the ventilator work for him. They also changed to a different breathing machine called the oscillator. It vibrates and makes a sub-woofing sound in order to get the CO2 “bubbles” out of his lungs. They also put in a line into his belly button in order to have another source to draw blood and give his morphine drip. He also has Pre-ductile and post-ductile to measure his oxygen flow. There’s a lot of terminology that we are learning quickly. Last, he received a transfusion in order to boost his red blood cell count. That really made a difference. Within a few hours, his red cell count was way up and his chest X-rays were clearing up. It was indeed a better day. I did cry a lot today because knowing that he’s sick and there’s nothing I could do to help him made me feel so useless. Luckily my milk came in and now I’m a pumping machine. Every two hours or so I pump away just thinking that this milk will eventually help him get better.


Throughout the day we got to do “care” with him (i.e. check his temperature and change his diaper). I had visitors come at lunch time (friends from work Kathleen, Cathy, and Michele) so I missed one care so Karl did it. I wish I were there because I guess Luke gave his father two poops and a nice stream of peep that bounced right off his finger and hit Luke in his eye. Good aim Son! Luke’s doctor, Dr. Stuartz, was very pleased with his progress but wanted to do some different tests to eliminate other causes for his condition. She ordered an echo cardio gram (ECG) to look at his heart to make sure it was working all right. The cardiologist (who happened to be very hot; almost McDreamy) looked at the heart structure, vents, etc. And Luke got a clean bill on his heart. So that eliminated the possibility that there was also a heart problem. He simply (if it can be very simple) has pre-mature lungs and RDS (respiratory distress syndrome). The doctor thinks he might also have an infection but not sure. Luckily he has been receiving antibiotics since day one so that should address that problem. The doctor wants minimum interruptions so we had a “family discussion” with my sister and mother in one of the NICU family rooms. We really did this in order to “chill out” my mother who was getting a bit overwhelming with all her questions and requesting to see Luke (which we were not allowing her to do). The doctor did great answering all the questions and trying to explain what was happening with Luke. Some tough things to listen to and understand but I think it satisfied my mother.


In the afternoon we received more visitors from work (Sarah, Sendy, Jimmy, Ivet, and Samanta) came to visit. My sister and mother came for dinner. We had take-out from Olive Garden – yummy. The night before we had Cuban food that Mother cooked which was delicious. The hospital food has been okay – breakfast and lunch has been really good but dinner is a different story. We have ordered almost every item and now we’re just making fun of the food. Everything looks like that cheap plastic food that kids play with. Not appealing at all. After tonight’s dinner, everyone left. Karl and I visited Luke until midnight and decided to sleep as much as we could. It was much needed after such a long day. Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t behaving herself at our apartment (i.e. waking up the girls and going through out stuff) and Karl had to drive home to make a “presence”. This chilled her out but wasn’t what we needed at midnight. Karl came back and we both fell asleep.