Tuesday, November 13, 2007 - Afternoon Update

I wanted to send a quick afternoon update and ask for prayers for Olivia. First, I’ll start with the good news. She’s continued to have no As or Bs on CPAP and they have moved her back onto nasal cannula. She gained 60 grams last night which puts her at about 3 lbs 11 ¾ oz. Now, a few days ago when they did an X-ray of her bowels, they noticed something suspicious on her left femur. If you remember a few weeks ago, she had a bruise there and they did an x-ray and it was fine. That is now coming into question again. They did another x-ray of the femur and noticed that indeed there was something there. It could be one of two things. It could be a bone fracture of her femur. This could be caused by rickets of prematurity. Premature babies can get this because of being on the TPN fluid (I.V. fluid) because there is no way to get enough calcium in them this way. She was not on TPN that long and her alk-phos level was never that high. She doesn’t seem to have a lot of the risk factors for rickets, however, this seems to be the most logical explanation. It could also be an infection either in the bone or the joint. A bone infection would be treated with a long-term course of antibiotics. If it were a joint infection, they would have to surgically open her up and drain it. She does not have any other signs of an infection. Sadly enough, the best that we can hope for right now is a bone fracture. They will be doing a full skeletal x-ray to check for any other fractures. She will also be having some blood work done. Her doctor would also like to do an MRI of her femur. An MRI cannot be done while on CPAP, so she would have to tolerate the nasal cannula well enough to go down for the MRI. A nurse and an RT would be with her. She will most likely not have her eye exam until Thursday. Please ask God to be with her. She’s gone through more in the last 2 ½ months than any person should go through in a lifetime. She’s just a baby. . .she shouldn’t have to go through all of this. Please continue to pray for her.