01.02.11 Evening Update

Bethany and I had been missing our church family so we decided to go and be a part of church this morning. It was wonderful to be together with our family, worshiping together! It was tough to be there and not with our girls so we did take off pretty quick after church was over to get to lunch with our blood family and then to Lydia first at The Pavilion.


Update

After Penny's crazy episode of high blood glucose levels on New Year's Eve, she spent the day yesterday recouping and getting rebalanced. Her numbers continued to stay around the mid 200's and finally hit the low 200's and dipped under that by the evening. We saw Dr. Ferry, the endocrinologist, on New Year's Day and after his examination he said that she had a rare case of congenital diabetes, which might be transient, that they would have to watch and play the balancing game of insulin/glucose to help her out. What caused the massive spike is still unknown, guesses thrown towards her body being under stress, under developed and not being able to keep up insulin-wise with the sugar coming in to her body. We also saw Dr. Chin, another cardiologist, that said that the general consensus for her coarct is that they aren't seeing the necessary signs to say that it really is a coarct. (amazing!) but they will continue to watch and see how her PDA closes before they make final prognosis on that.

This afternoon the doctor called and said that they would be starting Penny on her subcutaneous (subcu) insulin shot (detemir) to get her off of the IV insulin. A few hours ago, I called to check on Penny's stats and they said that her glucose levels were low, so low that the meter was now saying "too low" and so the lab work began again to see what her numbers were. She got to a low of 21 so they cut off all of her fluids and started to give her glucose again. (go figure!) The numbers game has been and is currently being played out as she gets different levels of glucose or dextrose IV's to balance out her subcu insulin shot. She's back up to about 241 on glucose levels. Tomorrow the gamut of doctors come in again to talk about her situation and see what they can do to get her numbers stabilized. This yo yo game is wearing on all of us and we're definitely ready for her to get stable.

As for Lydia, the past few days, she's been a stinkin little clock. Ticking away, movin those little arms around and around, steady as can be. Her food intake continues to increase (which makes for some good meconium diapers) and her weight gain continues to tip the scales, as much as a preemie can rock a scale. Our continued concerns are for her PDA to close and for there to be no complications within her gut, (NEC) esp. if she were to take on another course of indocin.

And so this is where we stand tonight. Thank you all for your prayers, comments and for your continued journeying with us down this path!

Goodnight from Le Bonheur NICU - The Chus