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 24th 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 6th 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.
