Madeline is doing better..

Dear friends,

I didn’t make a really big deal out of it on Saturday because the doctors were so pessimistic and saying we’re not out of the woods yet, but Madeline’s pneumatosis problem miraculously disappeared. The pneumatosis that was so evident in several x-rays just disappeared on Saturday around 5pm. The doctors were sure that it would resurface on future x-rays and kept telling us that it just doesn’t go away like that. Finally on Sunday morning a little before church Lisa sent me a text message: “Dr. Hall says we’re out of the woods.”

So Madeline continues to get better, it’s a slow process but her tummy continues to get smaller and softer each day. They are going to keep her on antibiotics and off feeds for a week just as a precautionary measure and will start feeding her again slowly (very slowly) sometime next week. Although she’s doing better, Madeline appears uncomfortable from time to time, I think she’s just hungry and still a little gassy.

Of course as soon as I write that Madeline gets the attention of half the nurses in the unit. When there’s something she doesn’t like she can just hold her breath, drop her sats and her heart rate and start setting alarms off left and right. They had to bag her for a while to get her sats back into range. We did her cares, changed her diaper (she had peed a lot), moved her onto her left side (which she prefers) and she settled down a bit.

Lisa and I continue to fight off the last of our cold which seems to persist. I just found out that RSV (a very serious and life threatening infection for infants) is also known as the common cold in adults. Please pray for us that we can fight this off soon and get better for Madeline’s sake. Please continue to pray for Madeline that she recuperates and that we can figure out quickly what’s bothering her now.

Grace,
Shanker & Lisa.