When we were at NICU after Ripley's birth, I mentioned that it was difficult to see babies going through even more difficult medical issues. I'm finding that to be the case again during this hospital stay. We have met a few families at Ronald McDonald House, where every family has a child with serious medical issues.
There is a two week old baby here who has pulmonary atresia and originally, yesterday they were going to do a catheter on him to keep his PDA open. His parents told me the doctors decided it was too risky and he is being transferred tomorrow to Stanford because he will need a heart transplant and Stanford is more able to operate on him faster. There is an almost two year old boy who had a liver transplant and is back because of a large amount of scar tissue that has continued to become damaged, leaving his doctors perplexed. I met the father of a little four year old girl with Leukemia. Her family's efforts to find a bone marrow match were fruitless, so she is in a clinical trial to use her mom's stem cells, even though they are a 5/10 match (less than ideal). This hit close to my hearty because I have been very active with bone marrow registry efforts and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training.
Although no one would want their child to undergo complex open heart surgery (and the possibility that there may be future open heart surgeries, depending on the growth of our son's pulmonary valve in relation to the rest of his heart), I realize that there are children facing even tougher battles. I pray for them all.
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