Little Set Backs

Baby Marlin is holding his own these days.  They tried taking him off of the NiPV assitance for his breathing, which is a good sign.  However, Marlin had other ideas.  He started having “episodes” where he would Brady and desat a lot so after 7 hours of breathing all by himself, they put him back on.  The problem was they weren’t sure if it was because of the change or if he had an infection of some sort.  Initially, all of his test came back negative and they couldn’t figure it out.  They even went as far as changing his feeding to once every 3 hours because he was tolerating it so well.  They would give him that feeding over two hours to begin with.

When they finally got the results of the urine culture it showed signs of a urinary track infection.  How does a baby in the NICU in an isolette get a UTI?  But I guess they do.  Fortunately, our wonderful nurse had kept his PICC line in.  The doctors told her that morning that she could take it out, but she thought it best to wait until we had all the test results.  Thank God!  They started him on 4 kinds of antibiotics until the other tests telling them wait kind of “bugs” (bacteria) he had.  He did not like this much, he became lethargic and slept a lot.

After a day of being on the antibiotics, his nurse said he was doing much better.  Before she even did anything to him (change his diaper, suction, or any other routine cares), he would kick his little legs out and start fighting her.  She laughed and told him to “bring it on”.  Marjorie is one of our favorite nurses.  It was good to see him fighting again.

They don’t think it has gone into his blood, but they want to do one more test, a lumbar puncture.  Yes, the go in and take a little of his spinal fluid to check that and make sure it has not spread and also to confirm how many days they have to do run the antibiotics.  They tried doing it yesterday, but were unsuccessful so they will probably try again in the next 24 hours.

This is the roller coaster part we all love so much (NOT!)  Two steps forward one step back.   So please continue to pray for him.  I will try to keep you updated.  In the meantime, enjoy the pictures.

Gus came to visit again.  He is starting to call Marlin “his baby”.  It is pretty cute.  He does so good touching him and telling him stories about tractors.  He really is a good big brother.  We are going to Idyllwild on Friday for the night.  It will be nice to see Gus in our home.