Some updates--more medical stuff

Luke asked me to write this update since I'm more medically minded than him.

Friday, after grandma and grandpa had left to return to Wichita, the pediatric ophthalmologist (the eye specialist doctor) came to exam Gwen. They told us it was going to be fairly upsetting to Gwen and we might not want to be there--so Luke took off and I stayed. I didn't directly watch the exam, but I have to admit she did cry and protest quite a bit. I can't imagine the exam was comfortable. She'd had her eyes dilated a bit earlier, so beyond the mechanical discomfort of having to have her eyes opened forcibly by the assistant/eyelid speculum, she had that very bright light shone in her eyes. Ouch!

The ophthalmologist found pretty significant retinal hemorrhages (little bleeds on the back of her eye). Apparently a lot of newborns have some retinal hemorrhages from the trauma of birth, but not to the extent Gwen had. She was concerned enough to go get the neonatologist and do a consult with her. They came back to me and told me they wanted to be a bit more aggressive in trying to find out why Gwen had these extensive retinal hemorrhages and were concerned there might have been an in utero infection causing her small birth weight and these other abnormalities Gwen had been dealing with. They didn't want to just attribute everything to the hypertension, without looking for something else just in case.

We discussed some of her blood work results so far--she'd had CBCs done, platelet counts, a "TORCH" test, *my* titer for Toxoplasmosis and when I'd been tested, etc. I don't know how I would have communicated if I didn't have a medical background!--and they decided they wanted to do more tests, especially for Toxoplasmosis due to my job as a veterinarian, CMV, and more blood tests.

Let me tell you, when the baby specialist doctor looked at me very seriously and said "I think we need to do a lumbar puncture" (a kind of spinal tap, similar in technique to an epidural) I lost it inside. I'm sure my panic showed on my face.

I had a pretty bad afternoon, but nothing like Gwen's evening. She got a pretty significant amount of blood taken for titers and had her lumbar puncture. Everyone was very nice and supportive, but 3 days after birth, I was a hormonal, emotional train wreck and I feel bad that that extra stress was there for Gwen and Luke, too. Not that there was much for me to do about it, but still! It's not like it helped anything being that upset. Gwen was pretty much exhausted for the next 12 hours, and we mostly let her sleep without trying to nurse her and gave her feedings through her tube.

We don't have all the results back from all the tests, particularly titers and PCR results, but preliminary results look pretty good, and Gwen still looks pretty good herself. There is talk of also doing a CT scan on her brain, even though the ultrasound looked good; the CT is just that much more sensitive. The pediatric ophthalmologist will be doing a recheck exam on Gwen next week, to see how/if the hemorrhages are starting to resolve or if there's been changes.

In happier news: She's had some more visitors! I'll let Luke post pictures, but Grandma Cheryl and Aunt Christy came up from Wichita on Saturday, and Aunt Emily visited after making a great name-plate sign for Gwen's NICU "pod".

Minor medical updates: She's been keeping her temperature up well, but they still think they'll keep her in the isolette a bit longer, just to be sure that taking her out won't be a big stress on her system to keep temperature up. She hasn't been having any glucose problems for a few days, so isn't having to have to done regularly anymore. Her bilirubin did go up for a bit, and she was a little jaundiced, but it started to fall pretty quickly and she didn't have to do any lights or anything yet. Still not breastfeeding well, but is a champ at digesting her NG tube feedings.