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Archive for November 5, 2009

Zoe’s Last Stand

Zoe passed in our arms tonight at 7:15 pm. The full medical breakdown of what happened I may detail in a future post, but it was our decision to let those who were present say goodbye to her and to hold her in our arms together as a family. It was still and quiet and a peaceful passing for her. We were able to share our thoughts and feelings with her before she left.

Zoe Critical Afternoon update

Zoe hangs on. Her blood pressure has been as low as 24/12 and is the immediate concern. She cannot be sustained at that level. Here is the raw medical assessment: Because of infection from her perforated bowel, her capillaries have opened up and leaked fluid into her surrounding tissue. She has a very visible edema. She is on strong antibiotics to try to beat the infection back. Until the infection is defeated, any medication to control her blood pressure will be like trying to bail out a leaky boat with a bucket. I just peeked my head in the door and her current blood pressure was 34/15, a little better than before, but still critically low. She has been on antibiotics for approximately 24 hours, and gets another dose every 12 hours.

We chatted with a social worker and they have a service here where they get professional photographers to take beautiful artistic pictures of critically ill babies in the NICU for free. A photographer will be arriving at 3 to take pictures of our babies. Shortly thereafter, we will be meeting with the attending neonatologist to discuss Zoe’s progress and what the next steps may be.

Zoe critical

We were awoken again at 5AM this morning. Zoe has a perforated bowel and bowel contents are coming out of her drain. There is nothing surgically that can be done for her until she is physically stable. There is some probability that she also has necrotizing enterocolitis. Again, nothing can be done until she achieves some sort of stability. She was very acidic this morning, but her PH has been normalized by medicine and a change to her oscillator settings. That is step one of I don’t know how many steps. She is on strong antibiotics to fight any infection that may come from her perforation. We are taking things hour by hour now.

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