Two Months Old

Joey is 2 months old today. I can hardly believe it, but he is much bigger, so I guess I can believe it. Joey had a rough day yesterday. Mike and I got there around 10:45 in the morning since he was having a procedure just after noon. Shortly after we got there, Joey had another one of his episodes where his heart rate dropped and his oxygen saturation dropped and Joey turned gray. At least I wasn't holding him this time. This one seemed worse than the last one since according to the monitor, his oxygen saturation dropped all the way down to 3% (normal for Joey is 95%-100%). In talking to his night nurse, she's sorry we've been having to witness these episodes, but he does have them regularly when he needs suctioned really badly. He had a plug of mucous in his vent tube that once it got out, he recovered to his baseline, but it was still pretty scary. Mike and I thought we were going to lose him yesterday. Then, after this episode, surgery came to take Joey downstairs to get a central line placed. Joey's line is inserted in his chest a little to his right of center. The tubing winds through his blood vessels until the tip gets to one of the major vessels near the heart. It's basically an IV, but instead of it being in a vein on his hand or foot, it's much more central (faster acting since it's nearer the heart and more stable since it's in a bigger vessel). These have to be put in surgically since the bigger vessels require a small incision to find and the surgeon needs flouroscopy (X-ray, but live instead of single shots) to get the tube placed correctly and Joey needed to be under anesthesia for the procedure. The surgeon told us that it was pretty difficult to get Joey's line placed and it took a little longer than they expected, but they're glad it's in now. Joey looked terrible when they brought him back, but his numbers were stable and nursing was just going to monitor him until the anesthesia wore off. Joey got some blood yesterday after all of this too, since he was a little low. That was Joey's big day. He's still sleeping now, but the nurse says he should be back to his normal self this afternoon. It doesn't seem fair that such a small little body that's so young should have to go through all of this, but we're trusting God to take care of Joey. We still need everyone's prayers as often as possible. Thanks.