Joey's update

Sorry my dear readers, that I haven't updated until now!

First appt was at 8, for the echo. No results back on that yet...

Then we had blood drawn. He had to get 2 heel-sticks, but that was better than a vein draw...much much better.

Then we saw the lung doctor. His levels were a little better this time than 3 weeks ago. He said it will be a long slow process, but eventually his lungs will heal. Out of all 3 babies, Joey definitely has the worst case of chronic lung disease. He showed us a chart of Joeys blood gas levels, charted from when he was born. A normal healthy newborn's levels are around 40-45. Right now, Joey's are at 54 I think. But while in the nicu, at one time his levels were at 100. The doctor told us that was really bad. Ugh. So he's come a long way!

And then we went and saw the surgeon. She was still unsure about which route to take to fix the hydrocele (fluid around the testicle) problem. She kept going back and forth...surgery...drain them with a needle...surgery...drain them with a needle... So we all talked about Joey, and how he's doing better finally, he's off all his meds, and his lungs are healing. If at all possible, we think it would be best to avoid re-intubation (the vent) and being put under, and going through surgery. (the surgery would be the same as a hernia repair) So we decided to try draining them with a needle. There are risks, such as hitting the blood supply to the testicle, or infection, but even so, much less invasive than surgery.

So the doctor said let me go talk to my nurse about doing this, and Davey said, oh, is she doing it now? I laughed and was like, "no Davey, not today. I'm sure she's scheduling an appoi-" Then the doctor walked in, and said, ok, lay him down on the table and take his diaper off. WHOA! We are doing this today!!

So one nurse held his legs, another held a pen light up to his testicle, I held the pacifier in his mouth (they gave me some handy sucrose (sugar water) to dip his binky in, he LOVED it.) And the doctor inserted the needle- Joey screamed, as you would expect if someone was sticking a needle in your testicle...- and then took the needle out, but left in a catheter. The fluid started squirting out before she could get the syringe on the catheter! So she got it screwed on there, and began drawing the fluid out with the syringe. After a few seconds, it was FULL! She had to get a second syringe to finish emptying the hyrdocele.

In all, she got out 13cc's of fluid- or- 3 tablespoons of fluid out of the ONE testicle. Poor little guy! But I imagine it feels MUCH better now.

If this works, she will do the other side next week. If not, we didn't put both testicles at risk at the same time, and he'll have to have surgery. Keep your fingers crossed that this gets the job done!!

Funny story, after we got home, Davey and I were talking about his little (the one that was huge earlier in the day) testicle. I started singing it "I'm half the man I used to be..." (yes, this is an actual song) since now he only has one huge testicle instead of two. Well, poor little guy, with his swollen testicles, his little penis was kind of swallowed by all of that fluid. So after they drained the fluid, you could actually see more of his little penis. So after I sang my little song, Davey replied back, "More like twice the man I used to be." Hahaha :D