Alright… in order to sort of clarify the current situation with Emerson for everyone. I haven’t been super good about the blog recently, if only because the recent situation has just made our lives super crazy.
Currently, Emerson is in Children’s Hospital in the ICU, on what seems to be a very slow road to recovery from RSV. He’s improved from his initial situation, but everything is very slow going. When he improves on one thing, the doctors seem to worry about something else. Right now, the concern is his blood pressure and his heart.
So a quick summary of the story so far…
On the weekend two weeks ago we were all home, and the girls were nursing nasty-sounding colds. They didn’t seem to feel bad. On Sunday, it seemed like we’d gotten through the worst of it, when Emerson started his own bit of coughing. As he’d already just gotten over a cold, we weren’t too worried, and just figured a few good rounds of baby-booger-sucking would pretty well solve the problem, and I went to Lacey on Monday with no reason to believe that Heather would have problems. By Tuesday evening, she called from Children’s Hospital. He’d stopped eating (he could eat or breathe, but not both.) At 10PM, he was in the PICU, with a breathing and feeding tube.
I came home Wednesday morning, not knowing much of anything. I knew that Stephanie had taken the girls (there’s a photo of her at Lydia’s 2nd birthday party), Heather was at Children’s with Emerson, and Heather’s car was at the pediatrician’s office (Emerson got to ride in a nifty ambulance.) I went and got the car first (I didn’t know how bad off Emerson was, so I thought we might need it to get him home.)
Once I saw Emerson, I realized how bad it was. He had tubes all over him, and taped to his face. He was asleep (thankfully), and I saw they’d hooked him up with some morphine. When I asked why, the nurse said that the breathing tube is normally “pretty uncomfortable” for infants. That sort of brought a sick feeling to my stomach, and I left to go get the girls, wondering where I’d stop to throw up if I needed to.
Emerson tested positive for RSV on Wednesday evening. RSV is a simple respiratory virus, but he had a bacterial infection in his lungs, which let the virus get in good and deep. They did an echo-cardiogram (a standard thing to do), and were shocked to find the left side of his heart to be a great deal larger than it ought to be. That’s when they got very worried, concerned that the virus might have infected his heart.
After much testing and much medication, we come to today. He’s still in the ICU, and his heart is the primary worry right now. At first, they thought it was just the RSV, but it didn’t respond to any normal RSV treatments (stayed the same size). They tried Milirinone first, then an IVIG, and most recently, steroids. He’s got another echo-cardiogram scheduled tomorrow, and hopefully, the steroids will have done the job, and he’ll have some decent improvements on the size of his heart. Otherwise, we may be looking at something like a biopsy, so see why his heart is so big.
Currently, having him home for Thanksgiving seems like a pipe dream, but there’s always hope. Seems like next week is possible (they’ve been weaning him off the IV meds, which will get him out of the ICU) but the doctors aren’t saying too much on that side.
Anyway… he’s working on getting better. He looks 1000% better, he just needs a good test result to start the right motions. Maybe the echo will be good tomorrow. Or at least, he’ll be 90% weaned off his IVs. Either way… some good news would be nice.
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