Originally Posted on | September 19, 2008

It has been a bumpy last couple of days. Wednesday the cardiologist told us that he had “the best possible report he could give” regarding John’s heart. Essentially that means that while his heart will almost certainly need some procedures, it looks like that they won’t be now, and may be well off in the future. Plus John’s clinical signs (his responses, activity, resistances, etc.) had show good improvement from Tuesday. That’s the kind of news we were praying and hoping for.

On Thursday, however, we were reminded that this path is not always going to be nice, smooth and upward sloping. John’s clinical signs were not as good as on Wednesday. They still didn’t know what is wrong with him (the hypoxia in the brain prior to birth is a only a guess based on symptoms) and they didn’t have another “best possible report” to share with us. In fact, the EEG from Wednesday showed no changes from the first one and John was still experiencing seizures, so they introduced a second drug to try and stop them.

All that being said, by the end of the day we were doing better—a bit more acclimated to the road ahead of us and also infused with the optimism of the staff. John’s clinical signs are still much better than one would expect from looking at his EEG, and his clinical/behavioral progress is so important that this gives us hope. A late afternoon talk with his neonatologist who emphasized this helped quite a bit.

John will have an echocardiogram and an MRI (at noon) today. Please pray for good results from these.

Kelly is going home today so that we can spend more time with William. He is doing pretty well, but wants to be with his family, including his little brother. He has already cleared a place for John at the dinner table and wants to feed him some turkey.

Thanks again for all of your prayers and support. A friend sent along the following passage, and I’ll close with it:

Psalm 70:4-5
4 May all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you!
May those who love your salvation
say evermore, “God is great!”
5 But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O LORD, do not delay!