The Story of Sunday the 17th

I'm all settled in at CHLA, my mom and dad are here with me right now, Michelle is with Hillary at St. John's in Oxnard, Brian is on his way to Burbank Airport to pick up Liza, and Amanda is with her soccer team in Camarillo getting ready for their next tournament game.  Reagan is here with me in the NICU at CHLA, I just spent some time with him, he is sedated and still under the effects of the paralytic they gave him for the helicoptor ride from Oxnard.  Landon is still at St. John's, he's sedated because of the whole pulling of the ventilator tube out of the mouth trick he pulled this morning.

Both Reagan and Landon have Neonatal Respiratory Distress Syndrome (NRDS).  Because they were premature, their lungs didn't build up enough surfactant, so they aren't efficient enough in doing what the lungs normally do, basically taking the air we breathe, sending the oxygen to the bloodstream and filtering out the CO2.  That's why they have been off and now again on the ventilators.  They also have some newborn jaundice going on that they are/were treating with phototherapy.  If you look at the links on those two, you see that they are things that are normally associated with prematurity, and Reagan and Landon were five-and-a-half weeks early.

Reagan has a couple of other issues going on, that's why I'm here with him at Children's Hospital after his helicoptor ride.  Reagan has Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn (PPHN) to go along with his Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA).  The PPHN is mainly why we are here.  St. John's doesn't have the facilities to treat it.  The first thing they did with Reagan, as they were getting ready to transfer him, was bring from CHLA a nitric oxide machine to go along with the ventilator, the NO is supposed to help speed up the O2 - CO2 transfer process.  So he's here on one of those right now.  He has two nurses dedicated to his care right now.  I spent some thime with him and them and they are doing everything they can for him.  From talking to him, I expect us to be here for at least 3-5 days.  Hillary and I will work something out so we can switch between Reagan/Hollywood and Landon/Oxnard.  :-(

There is good news as of now for Reagan.  The nurses and neonatologists here were completely expecting to have to put Reagan on a Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine as soon as he got here but he seems to be responding really well to the NO treatment.  Fingers crossed.

The ECMO machine is kinda like dialysis except where a dialysis machine does the work that kidneys can't, ECMO does the work that the heart and lungs can't.  Basically, the blood comes out of the babies heart, throught the machine that oxygenates the blood, and puts it back into the heart.

Here's a YouTube video I found showing one hooked up to a baby.....




That's all I have for now, we should know more about Reagan later today to see how the NO treatment is working.

Please keep the boys in your prayers.

Phil