11th Update

I’m sure most are waiting to hear how Samuel’s day went on Friday. At about 10:30 his little room was filled with people; doctors, nurses, respiratory, photographer, family and others. Mom dressed Samuel for his pictures and when everyone was ready they removed the feeding and vent tubes. Things went well for the first 10 minutes; we got some pictures with Mom, Dad and Samuel, then his secretions started clogging his airway. They put him back in bed to clear and suction and to get his oxygen saturation level back to normal. After that, they returned him to Mom and we were able to get pictures with the whole family before his secretions clogged his airway again. They put him back in bed and we decided to re-insert the ventilator tube.

Once he was back on the ventilator and they were able to suction his lungs; the suctioning pulled up secretions, blood and milk. The blood was probably just irritation and broken blood vessels from pulling and re-inserting the tube, because within a couple of hours it had stopped. The milk was a sign that he aspirated. It is routine for them to x-ray after inserting the tube to check for positioning; the x-ray did show that he definitely did aspirate. The doctor started Samuel on antibiotics right away in hopes to prevent any symptoms from pneumonia. Saturday afternoon they did another x-ray and he does have what they call aspiration pneumonia, but he is not having any problems so far.

Samuel has bounced back from Friday’s excitement and he is again breathing over the vent with low settings. The doctor said that Samuel didn’t appear to be having any problems breathing without the vent, but the lack of the gag reflex is what prevented him from doing well. We now know for sure that at this point we will have to do the tracheotomy and G-tube until the time his gag reflex is established.

We did get a surprise on Saturday morning. Samuel partially opened his left eyelid. We could see his eye moving as if he was looking around. A little while later, his eye rolled back and the eyelid finally closed. We assumed he went to sleep. Later that day his left eye opened again and this time it was half-way opened.

We ask for prayer to protect him from any adverse effects from the pneumonia and that the antibiotics would clear it up. For continued healing of the brain so that both eyes would open and he would have sight. Pray that we can have both surgeries scheduled at the same time, so that Samuel only has to go under anesthesia once, not twice. We also need prayer for my family’s health. I think I am coming down with a cold or something, so I haven’t been to the hospital. No one else has any symptoms and we hope it stays that way…

I thank everyone for their emails of encouragement. I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to answer them all. I thank God for all of you who lift Samuel up in your prayers and for all the other blessings that are being poured on our family. May God bless you and your families.

Yancy