Skip to main content

A Brief Update

It was a rough morning for Eleanor and Kim.

Eleanor's lungs are having some issues, and so doctors this morning took some cultures, a blood sample, and inserted a catheter to collect a urine sample. Doctors are thinking it's a lung infection, which would be the best case scenario, but again, they won't know for a bit.

Kim said she was a hot mess and almost passed out at one point, but Nonna told me over the phone that she did a good job of knowing when to step away and sit down.

It will be about 48 hours before any results can be interpreted and they can rule some things out and figure out what's going on.

Eleanor, I'm told, did better all afternoon, but her oxygen help was still higher. Her stitches were removed in her right side. They are proactively treating her in case it's an infection with antibiotics and she has an IV in her head (this is the easiest and best veins to hit, as gruesome as it is to picture).

If it's not an infection, they will most likely have to give her steroids. From what I understand, they don't like to give steroids because they want her to develop naturally, and steroids don't just spot treat, but affect all of her organs.

Let's hope it's an easy answer. Will update when we know more.

-Pam

Comments

  1. Praying hard for you Eleanor. God please put your healing hands upon her and heal her.

    ReplyDelete
  2. God touch Kim and Alex as they go through this journey with Eleanor. Love to you all

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First 48

Hi friends and family of Kim, Alex, and baby Eleanor Sutara, After talking with Kim and Alex, it seemed easiest to send updates to everyone through a blog post. We are grateful and appreciative of everyone's concern, support, and well wishes as Eleanor begins her long journey in Akron Children's. Eleanor is a PPROM baby, meaning that Kim experienced a preterm premature rupture of the membranes (PPROM), showing little to no amniotic fluid in utero, and was subsequently hospitalized long-term for monitoring at 24 weeks following a large bleeding episode, with the hopes that the baby would be able to hang in to 34 weeks. I will let Kim elaborate if she wants on the pre-birth details, but for now I'm just slapping some hard and fast details together from what I can immediately recall. Heart monitoring of the baby beginning on Saturday, 19 January revealed some variability, and Kim was taken to the labor and delivery ward as a precaution. By Tuesday morning, Kim's doct...

Into the Swing of Things

Happy (belated) Mother’s Day! Eleanor got her vent tube removed on Saturday and is doing WONDERFULLY! Behold the power of steroids! They placed her on a CPap nasal cannula instead of the elephant mask, but she still is actively annoyed with the prongs in her nose and has figured out that she can remove them by smooshing her face against anything and jerking her head away. She’s too smart for her own good. She has also already begun weaning her CPap support settings and hangs out at room air (21%) oxygen almost all of the time. She is breathing comfortably unless she is super angry, and who really breathes well when they are sobbing anyway? Doctors have discussed moving her to Vapotherm (this is a high flow nasal cannula that makes oxygenated gas that pumps into the lungs and is a great oxygenation tool and less invasive than CPap...read more here:  https://vapotherm.com/hi-vni-technology/ ) on Thursday. This makes Mom and Dad really nervous that they are pushing her too hard ...

The Last Hurdle Before Home

My has the time flown (but at the same time crawled)! Eleanor is now 5 months old and this morning weighed in at 10lbs, 13oz! She officially is too big for newborn clothes as well as the tiny baby socks. She poops on her ensemble approximately once a day and still enjoys playing and being held. She is doing very well post-steroid regimen. Her last dose of the big guns was on Friday morning. She has since switched to hydrocortisone so that her adrenal gland knows to kick it back into gear and her body doesn’t go into a shock of sorts without the steroid boost. She will have to have an ACTH test in two weeks when she is finished with this round of steroids. ACTH is a hormone injected into the shoulder muscle. They draw blood before and after to measure how well the adrenal gland responds. Eleanor has also been learning bottles. She started off pretty well, initially taking bottles with understanding the general concept of suck, swallow, breathe, but she oftentimes just wants to...