Monday

Happy Monday! I know, I know.....I still haven't gotten the pictures up yet. I am going to try and do it early this week. I have been working a lot of hours and trying to spend as much time with James and Trevor as I can before they have to go home. Unfortunately, their visit coincides with end of quarter reporting, so it has been a balance.

Dr. Boucek, a cardiologist who specializes in heart failure, came in today to assess Joshua and see what he thought. He was not 100% convinced that the things that we are seeing (fever, irritability, etc) are related to his heart! UGH......so, where does that put us?? I would like to know too :) He will be spending time with Joshua all week long. Of course, today when he came up here Joshua was totally chilling, taking a nap....no fever, ok sats, slightly high heart rate.... Leslie told Dr Baden that he needed to come in when he was not so happy so that he could get a better assessment. :) They have tweaked his Ativan again and last night and today he was pretty doped up! We are still trying to figure out the balance with that. They have upped his Captoprill and are hoping to get him off of the Milrenone, but they are waiting to see what Dr B has to say first. Hopefully, I will have a little more information tomorrow. They are going to do an echo and do some special measurements of the right ventricle as well as get his "unhappy heart" # from his blood.....I can't remember the real term but that is what it was referred to. Basically the higher the # the higher the chance that you are in heart failure. When he got here in June his # was 14 (low) and they will see what it is tomorrow.

I have a special prayer request for today. A family that was here from Montana had to make a heartbreaking decision to take their baby off of life support and let her go home to be with Our Lord. Brianna and Josh (and grandma Tammy) had a little girl named Arianna. She was flown here at 3 months old with meningitis/encephalitis. They have been here about the same amount of time as we have. Tammy got here a couple days ago and they did a scan on Arianna. The encephalitis had eaten away little Arianna's brain, leaving only the brain stem. There was no chance that she would ever be able to breathe, swallow, "wake up" or maintain any body functions on her own. Please hold their family up in prayer that they can find peace and comfort at this time of extreme heartache. I can't imagine the pain that they must be feeling.

Blessings,
Leah and family