11.18.2009

Update on Liam

We first want to thank everyone for your prayers and love.

Liam is now home for the time being and it feels so good to be all together. Hoping to put "2009 the year of the hospital" behind us soon.

I spent last night with Liam as he recovered from the anesthesia. He slept quite a bit, ate well, and even played for an hour with his favorite little lion.

Yesterday afternoon we heard a few different possibilities. An angiogram was scheduled for Monday morning and is now being delayed for a little bit due to Liam's size. While he is over 7lbs. (yes!) and has tripled his birth weight, he is for all purposes the size of a newborn. If they felt Liam was compromised in any way, they would order the test and take the risks, but they do not feel we are exactly at that point yet, which is a very good thing. It may just be a matter of getting him to 10lbs. before performing the procedure. While they would use the smallest catheter possible, any catheter is large for Liam's size.

In the meantime, we are to bring him to the ER immediately should he exhibit any unexplained irritability or difference in his usual demeanor. The major concern with his condition is a heart attack.

Pictures from the sedated echo were able to give them some confirmation of what they believe to be happening with his heart, but only the cardiac atheterization/angiogram will tell them 100%. If he were over 2, they could give him a CT angio, but with his size there is only a 50/50 chance it will work and could lead to unnecessary exposure to radiation if we have to order the angiogram anyway.

So we are taking things one day at a time...our motto for 2009 ;) We are grateful to have Liam done well with the anesthesia and to have gained a little more information. We know it's just a matter of time before the angiogram will take place. Liam's coronary arteries are coming off of one opening instead of 2. We will learn more about what this means in the next few days. The official terminology is that he has an anomaly of his coronary artery.

We are just plain pooped. We thank our family and friends for helping with the rest of our boys so we could both be at Children's with little Liam for his procedure. Please continue to keep him in your prayers. While his condition is still a serious one, we have a victory in that we were able to get more images and more detail to understanding his heart. While his heart make work differently from ours, that maybe just fine and is our greatest hope for Liam.

We should learn more in the next couple days. There is a team of all different sorts of doctors related to cardiology functions reviewing his echo pictures and they will meet to decide what to do next. We appreciate this as one doctor may believe the angiogram is necessary ASAP, but another may balance the rationale by citing the risks associated as being to great right now unless Liam's life were in immediate danger. This system of discussion is why we have our child at Children's Memorial.

God has his hands on Liam, I will continue to say this and he has his hands on us. Miss Cheryl and Miss Shirley you are great examples of this, providing us the familiarity we needed the past few days at Children's and the compassion only good people have...we love you both.

We are blessed to have such special and caring family and friends. Everyone at the hospital commented on how it must have been difficult to be there and have 3 newborns at home. While it was difficult to be away from them, we could not have had Liam get the urgent care he needed had it not been for our support system. We love you all.

We are grateful for all of your prayers and taking us into your hearts and concerns again.

Will update when we have more info.

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