It's Not a Blackberry but it is a PDA

Here is the latest to pray for. A few days ago our doctor noticed a murmur when he was listening to Wesley's chest. He was concerned by this and had a radiologist come in to do an ultrasound on his chest. They found what is called a patent ductus arteriosus, or PDA for short. This of course is not a personal digital assistant. To make it short when a baby is in the womb him and the mother are on the same breathing cycle. Her lungs are his lungs. When a baby is born there is a duct that closes to keep blood and other fluids out of the lungs. In most preemies this does not close because the signals get all out of whack do to an early birth. It can be barley open or wide open and it turns out that Wesley's is wide smack open. So they need to do something to close the duct. They can accomplish this one of two ways.

• They can use medicine. They use IB Profen of all drugs to help get it closed. Our doctor is concerned about using drugs because of the other bleeding episodes he has going on with his body.
• They can perform a simple surgical procedure to go in a clamped the duct close. Our doctors have explained this is a very simple procedure, but it is still surgery and nothing to take lightly.

The doctors are going to consider all the factors and weigh the options to determine which is the best path to go down. It is really crazy to think that our week old 2 and a half pound son would be up for surgery, but we have been encouraged to hear they do this on babys half his size all the time.

I would just ask that you would pray for:

• wisdom and discernment for the doctors.
• pray that a miracle might happen and the duct will close on its own, one doctor said he has seen crazier things than that.
• pray for Wesley to have a speedy recovery no matter which road they go down so he can be ready for the next hurdle to jump over.

We are meeting with our team of doctors on monday morning to figure out what the best game plan might be. We will keep you posted on what they come up with. As of right now he is in no need of any emergency actions because he is holding surprisingly, to them not to us, stable even though he has this going on.