October 14, 2009

I was a bit taken aback when I arrived at Charlotte's room today and saw a doctor and nurse looking over a baby in an isolette with a ventilator behind it. After verifying it was Charlotte's room I realized she was getting another eye exam, but was not actually on the ventilator. It scared me though! Her room is mighty crowded for the time being...photo below (she's wrapped up in the isolette).

I spoke with the eye doc and she moved Charlotte's surgery to tomorrow. This was a bit disappointing because the nurses had prepped Charlotte last night, and now I hope her IV line will still be good so she won't need to be poked again. The nurse who put in her IV did a very nice job - the result is much less bulky than the IV she had in Marquette, that IV included a spongy splint which kept her entire arm straight. Her IV is on her left hand in the picture below.

The surgery is scheduled for 12:30 p.m., and Charlotte will be intubated at about 11 a.m. so that she can be sedated. We expect her to be extubated sometime tomorrow afternoon, as soon as the drugs wear off. According to Charlotte's eye doc, 80% of laser surgeries for Retinopothy of Prematurity are successful the first time - the other 20% of patients require additional surgeries. Although, she has been performing laser surgeries for 6 years and has only had 2 babies who fell into that 20%, so she said her stats are much better than the national average. I guess that's promising!

I'm watching the news as I type this post and heard a disturbing, tragic statistic. Black babies in southeastern Wisconsin are 3.5 times more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies. Their rate of death is higher than babies in some third world countries. An organization is implementing radio messages to try to turn this around, but it will take more than just that. Sad.