The Story of Catching up with the Story

I will once again start a post with "sorry I haven't posted lately".

Landon
Here's the meat and potatoes, let's knock out the Landon story starting after I got home from soccer practice on Monday, before I took him to VCMC.....

As I had mentioned before, Hillary had noticed that a couple of times, Landon looked like he stopped breathing for a bit and his skin turned white with blue around his mouth.  After explaining it to Dr. Coppa over the phone, hearing her take, and then seeing it for myself not more than 10 minutes later, I knew that we needed to get him to the hospital.

As I was driving him there a couple of weird things happened.  First, about 10 minutes after I left the house, I got a text message from Amanda that said "How's Landon?"  Figuring that she had talked to Hillary, I called her.  She had just wanted to know how the boys were, I told her what was going on with Landon, and she was sad (like we all were).  The other weird thing was this.  As I'm driving down the road in Hillary's car, Landon is in his rear facing car seat, in the back seat of the car, so I have no idea what he looks like.  I reach back to hold his hand, and he would grip it sometimes and sometimes his hand would go limp.  Was he just falling in and out of sleep or was he having more episodes?  I didn't know.  So for the remainder of the drive to the hospital I'm arguing with myself wbout whether or not we should have called 911 and had an ambulance come and get him as opposed to me driving him there myself.  (If we had called 911 and the ambulance came for him, they would have taken him to St. John's because it is the closest emergency room, and then once they figured out the boys insurance story, they would have had to transfer him to VCMC.)

When I got to VCMC, I took Landon straight to the emergency room, went to the admitting counter, and as I was explaining why we were here, Landon had another apnea episode right there.  You don't have to wait very long to see a nurse or doctor in an emergency room when you have a baby that isn't breathing.  We were taken right away back to the patient area where two nurses and a doctor were right there.  Landon had a few more episodes while we were being checked out, and they decided that he would be admitted right away to the NICU.

Because Landon had been out in the real world and was coming back into a NICU environment, he had to be in an isolated room, in case he got something outside and brought it in with him, so he wouldn't infect the other NICU babies.  They don't have a doctor on staff at night in the NICU, but they do have nurse practicioners, and of course RN's.

Here's Landon's digs.....

And here are some more pictures of him there.....

While was there, and the nurses were getting him set up in the NICU, he had 6 or 7 apnea events.  It's really scary to see.  You can see him like hold his breath, but you can tell he is fighting to breathe.  His skin instantly turns ghost-white, and the area around his mouth and nose turns really really blue.  And then like 10-15 seconds into it, he breathes and his skin turns pink.

The question with Landon, was whether he was having apnea of prematurity or seizures.  And whichever one it was, why was he having them?  They decided to run tests to determine if it was a viral infection or a bacterial infection.  They did blood gas tests, an LP test, EEG, and a cranial ultrasound, and put him on a regimen of antibiotics.  They also put a nose cannula back on him and hooked him up to an IV.  There were initial discussions about him being anemic, and that worried us, until I did some research on it.  Check this out.

Basically, the doctors and nurses were going to treat him for everything and then hope to rule causes out.

I ended up staying at the hospital until about 6am-ish, then came home and took a little nappy-poo.  Poor Hillary had been up most of the night as well, worried.  She ended up just staying downstairs with Reagan and napping between feedings.  I ended up sleeping until about 11:30 and then went back to the hospital for a while to see Landon.

Here we are at the hospital.....

Fast forward to today.  I got to VCMC at 8:30 this morning to meet the neurologist, Dr. Goldie, he wanted to see Landon after reviewing his EEG because he didn't like what he saw.  Basically Dr. Goldie's diagnosis was that both Reagan and Landon developed viral infections in utero.  Reagan's infection manifested itself primarily in his lungs resulting in the severe PPHN that sent him to CHLA.  Landon's infection affected his brain, leading to encephalitis which caused his seizures (the apnea episodes).

Because Landon hasn't had any apnea episodes since after he got to the hospital, Dr. Goldie believes that the infection has passed and that Landon is on the upswing.  If you think about it, it makes sense, particularly with Reagan.  He turned a corner when he was at CHLA and his progress thereafter was far quicker than any of the doctors expected.

The house pediatrician at VCMC's NICU said that Landon can come home.  He wanted to send Landon home with an apnea monitor, but the results of the pneumogram test were negative, so the insurance won't approve it.  If they had, Landon would be home with us tomorrow.  Since we couldn't get one, the doctor wants to monitor Landon for three more nights, so the plan right now is Landon coming home on Monday.

Hillary spent some time at the hospital with Landon today and she, like me, is amazed at how big he is.  I'm not lying to you, he is huge.  He is well over 8.5 pounds.  He is eating 4 ounces of formula every serving.  At that rate, we're going to be broke by mid-February.  So good news on the Landon Front.

Reagan
So Reagan has been home with us since Saturday, and he got to spend a few days with his brother before Landon's troubles.

Here they are chillin on the couch, watching the Super Bowl.....

And here they are hanging out with mommy.....

And here is the havoc wrought upon one of our two diaper genies in only a few days.....

Reagan had his circumcision on Monday and his check-up on Wednesday.  One of the concerns that we have with Reagan, is that he is so much smaller than his brother.  When they were born, Reagan was a pound and a half lighter, and now it's over two pounds.  Dr. Coppa wanted us to start feeding Reagan every two hours during the day and every three hours at night, and to supplement his breast milk with formula.  Landon gets fed every three hours during the day and every four hours at night.  Landon should be "on demand" at night but we want them to be on the same schedule.

Re-read that part again about how often the boys need to be fed (for the weekend when they were together).  This is what the feeding schedule was for Sunday and Monday.....

7am - Reagan and Landon

9am - Reagan

10am - Landon

11am - Reagan

1pm - Reagan and Landon

3pm - Reagan

4pm - Landon

5pm - Reagan

7pm - Reagan and Landon

9pm - Reagan

10pm - Landon

11pm - Reagan

1am - Reagan and Landon

4am - Reagan and Landon

7am - Reagan and Landon

Lather, rinse, repeat

And don't forget to squeeze in there the fact that Hillary still needs to pump to keep the boob juice flowing. Now you know why I haven't updated the blog in a while.

Anyway, back to Reagan.  He is adjusting to home life quite well, though I am sure he misses his brother.  He has been sleeping straight through between his nighttime feedings, it will be much better when we can let him go on demand.  It will be interesting to see how they interact when Reagan comes home again and the band is back together.  While Hillary was at VCMC with Landon, Amanda and I packed up Reagan in the stroller and walked down to the quickie-mart.  He slept the whole way.

Amanda

Amanda turned 13 on Wednesday.  My sweet baboo is a teenager!  We had soccer practice on Wednesday, and then came home so I could make her a birthday dinner.  She wanted sliders (mini-burgers) and luckily for her, I got the Billy Mays slider-maker for Christmas.  Believe me when I tell you this, this thing really works, the burgers were fantastic, I highly recommend it.  I bought Sara Lee dinner rolls to use as buns and those worked great.

Anyway, Amanda has been so excited all week about getting to come here to be with her brother.  She was super bummed about not being able to see Landon.  Amanda has been with Reagan, and she has been with Landon, but she hasn't been with Reagan and Landon at the same time.  Next week.

I picked up Amanda this morning after leaving Landon, we went to the mall and had lunch, a little daddy-daughter time.

Check out these pictures we took at the picture booth.....

We have the championship round of our all-star tournament this weekend.  We play tomorrow at 2pm, and if we win, we play two games on Sunday (lose and go home).  Wish us luck!

That's all I got

Well, this took a while to type, so that's all I have to report for now, I believe everyone is all caught up. 

And I promise, that I will make more frequent updates.

Thanks for following along, more later.

Phil