This is the next chapter in our long struggle with sick babies and Hirschsprung's Disease. Of course, the story began over 17 years ago. If you are just tuning in, you may want to start at the beginning.

(If you know me in real life, please don't be confused. The children all have blog psuedonyms that begin with the same first letter as their real name.If you have trouble, check out my About Page to figure out who is who.)

Previous Chapter: Off To Intensive Care

 

December 11- Day 9 in the hospital, 8 days post-op

 

When we arrived at Sean’s room in the Intensive Care Unit the next morning, the nurse greeted us with some news from the wee hours. Sean’s fever had come down… but now his temperature was too low. It was down to 93.2 degrees. His little feet felt so cold.

 

Yesterday we had asked our small group to pray for Sean’s temperature to come down, but we didn’t mean too low either. So we immediately called them and asked them to pray for his temp to come back up and normalize!

 

Meanwhile, the nurse put warming packs and some nice warm blankets around our tiny Sean. The rush was on to get his temp back up! All of her hard work did bring his temp up, but only to 95 degrees. They like to see babies’ temps in the 96.8 to 98.6 range. It was still too low.

 

The docs (med students and a fellow) came in on their rounds. They ordered warming lights to bring Sean’s temp up more quickly. We had to get his temp up!

 

Before long the warming lights arrived. They are really tall with feet that roll under the bed and two arms that cross over the breadth of the bed above the patient and shine down on him. Their girth didn’t help this momma feel any more secure about the state her baby was in at that moment. Since the warming packs had still been tucked in with Sean during the wait for the lights, the nurse thought it wise to take Sean’s temp one more time before we turned the warming lights on.

 

96.8 degrees! Normal range!

 

We were overjoyed at the care of the Father! But that wasn’t the only time that we would see God’s hand that day.

 

After Sean’s temp had regulated, the nurse told us the doctor had given orders to start IV nutrients for Sean. It had been10 days since Sean had been able to nurse and 9 days since he had had any Pedialyte. Since then, he had only had saline in his IV. Dr. E was worried that he would begin to lose weight. The IV nutrients would give him more substance, but since it is a milky substance it is also known for blowing out IVs.

 

The previous Saturday—5 days earlier—the IV in Sean’s left hand that they had been using to run all of his meds through started to look like it was going to go bad very soon. At that point, we thought that we would likely be going home soon and didn’t really want to put Sean through the torture of the needle stick to start a new IV (and it is torture for a baby) that we would only need a day or less. So we had called our small group and asked them to pray for it to hold out just long enough.

 

The nurse started the IV nutrients in this same “left-hand IV.” Before too long she began to question the IV site. She thought it may go bad very soon if it wasn’t already, so she started a new IV in Sean’s scalp. He was still really out of it, so he barely seemed to notice the needle stick. This new IV meant that we would still have to watch for the site to go bad, but he likely would not need the nutrients long enough for that to happen. This site should hold the whole time.

 

The problem now was that if the IV in his left hand was indeed bad, they would have to stick him for every blood test that the docs needed—sometimes several a day, especially while he was this sick. They couldn’t really turn off the nutrients, take blood, and then turn the nutrients back on. They also would not start a new IV site right now while he was mostly unaware just so that they would have a hep locked IV (good site that is “locked” while not in use) for blood tests.

 

As the nurse began to check the blood return in his left-hand IV, Hubby and I prayed that the site would still be good. God had kept it going for the last five days, after all…

 

She was very surprised to see that the IV site still had good blood return!

 

We were a bit surprised but thrilled to see that God had really done another miracle for our tiny boy this day! Sean could have all his blood work done through this hep-locked IV site rather than getting a needle stick each time. And it had far less chance of blowing out since it wasn’t in use.

 

In these moments, our hope began to well up within us.

 

And it wasn’t even 10 a.m. yet.

 

 

Next Chapter: A Day of Hope and Rashes