Hi again from Nottingham,

We are now back on the ward. This is our second attempt at moving down the scale of treatment. We were initially moved back to the ward from the high dependency unit, on Friday 24^th Jan but by the early hours of Monday morning Zach’s oxygen requirement had gone up and the nurses couldn’t keep a close enough eye on him. On a normal ward its 4 patients between 1 nurse. On the high dependency ward it is 1 nurse between 2 patients. Whilst we were in intensive care cardiologist’s found a hole in Zach’s heart which could have been caused by the lung disease. It means that blood “shunts” across the top of his heart. Blood that has come from the body, deoxygenated can pass through the hole and mix with oxygenated blood that has come from the lungs, and vice versa. This means that Zach’s normal oxygen saturation level can be lower.

The hole is present in all babies at birth as a short cut for blood because the lungs aren’t used in the womb and will close normally. Sometimes it doesn’t close or is reopened as a result of illness. It was probably caused by the pulmonary hypertension which was caused by the “stiffness” of Zach’s lungs. Pulmonary hypertension is when the pulmonary artery becomes narrow meaning the right side of the heart has to work harder. Zach is now on sildenafil which some of you who probably wouldn’t admit; know it as the gentleman’s friend…Viagra. This increases blood flow which is helping with the blood oxygenation and captopril which helps his heart pumps better. Zach is still being weaned off his sedatives. This means that he can get quite upset when he is due his next dose, as you would expect with someone who is addicted to drugs.

Zach will be going to Birmingham children’s hospital for a MOT in a couple of weeks. Along with this we will hopefully get some time at home together. We haven’t been home since the 6^th Dec so it would be nice to get acquainted with home again. I think we have now spent more time in hospital than we have in our new house.

That’s about all our news thankfully; boring is good as we’ve found out. We would like to apologies to our French followers, who were unfortunately missed on our list of countries the blog is read in, in our last post. Do you know the difference between the French and toast… you can make soldiers out of toast.

On that note we will bid you fare well, till the next time au revoir!