Transfer to Children’s Hospital
Things have been very up and down with us all lately and and finding the time to send updates has been really hard. The latest news is that Nathan has been moved to Children's Hospital to get extra care. On Wednesday of last week his heart echo showed a small clot in his right atrium (his heart). It wasn't causing him much of a problem at the time, but they wanted to treat it, just the same, so that it wouldn't later be a problem. The next day he was diagnosed with a staph infection.
The plan for treating the clot was to give Nathan medication, a blood thinner, to keep the clot from growing, so that the body could dissolve the clot on its own. They started this treatment on Wednesday night, but when they looked at the clot on Friday, they found it had actually gotten bigger. They called Katie and me in for an emergency meeting with the Cardiologist from Children's hospital, who explained to us that surgery now needed to be considered in our list of potential best options. It was at this point that they moved Nathan from Beth Israel, to Children's Hospital, to keep a close eye on the clot and make sure that it would respond to more aggressive medication and not break off and travel to some other part of the body where it could do some real damage.
So here's where things stand today. The surgeons have told us that they don't want to do surgery unless Nathan gives them some indication that they need to. The first indication is if his blood pressure changes. This would indicate that the clot has grown to a size where it is impeding blood flow. Thankfully, there have been no blood pressure changes. The other indication they're looking for is if he continues to test positive for Staph past Monday. If so, this will confirm their suspicions that the clot itself is infected, and microscopic pieces have been breaking off and spreading the infection to the rest of the body. Infection always complicates surgery, so this would be the worst scenario. The only other thing that could lead to surgery is if they see something on the heart echo that tells them they need to operate. At the time of this writing, we have just heard that they have performed another heart echo and we are awaiting the results of that. What we want to see is that the clot has stopped growing.
The only good news is that this seems to be just a major bump in the road. From what the doctors have told us, once all of these things are taken care of, there should be no long term damage. Of course, the risk of that goes up if he has to go into surgery. So now it's just a waiting game. Yesterday one of the doctors described Nathan as critically ill. Katie and I are scared and exhausted, but we have faith that God will see all three of us through this. We appreciate your love, support, and prayers.