Tuesday, 4/5

It is definitely turning out to be an interesting week. Today the cardiologist came by and we talked more about the PDA. It's been a while since I posted the definition but a PDA is a "small blood vessel within the heart that fails to close after birth. Premature infants are at greatest risk of PDA. Babies with PDA are treated with a medication called Indomethacin to try to close the vessel. If medication attempts do not close the PDA, surgery may be required to “tie off” the vessel. This surgery is called a PDA ligation".

Dinky's PDA is pretty large and definitely appears to be impacting his respiratory status. How much we are not sure but they believe it needs to be ligated. So...the plan is for us to be transferred to CHOP (Children's hospital of Philadelphia) by the end of the week. In order to do this they have to get Dinky off the jet and onto the regular ventilator so they will work on that the next few days. We're not sure how he'll get down there but it will be either by ambulance or helicopter. Even though flying makes me nervous I hope that's the way they go because it's only a 15-17 minute flight. This is exciting in the sense that I feel like we might make some headway after surgery, it's also very scary. The surgery will no doubt set him back a little bit and that is concerning. But they do feel like the benefits outweigh the risks at this point.

Leaving the NICU at RWJ is going to be tough. In the 8 weeks and 4 days we've been there we have met so many people who have been so wonderful to us. That is going to be a tough day on many levels.