Rambo's Rampages...

And by 'neighborhood' I mean PICU. Talk about chaos. Wonderful wonderful chaos. I miss that place. But when I first walked in I was totally intimidated. And that was on an 'empty' day in the unit.  It's a weird sight to see your tiny baby on an adult size bed. And weirder still when that entire bed is covered in equipment just for him. As well as his body being all geared up with tubes and wires and barely an inch to spare. It's amazing what can happen to someone in 6 hours. Our sweet little Rambo had become the bionic baby.  At this point in my head I'm pretty much just hearing static and nothing. I was finding it hard to even form a sentence that was worth anything. (I know what you're thinking about the two prior sentences, and yes, I know what I just said. And yes, I mean more than usual.) I'm used to having a 2 week old at home: watching him sleep in his bouncer, patting his back when he's crying, picking him up, feeding him etc. No...

You know you're in for a real ride when you get a call from the doctor (on Christmas Day) saying they had to reintubate your child. SECOND emergency intubation - check. I bet you're starting to wonder how many times this poor child has been intubated and extubated?? Well, today marks try number 9 without the breathing tube. 9. Seriously. I could give you a play by play account for the 7 tries in between but I won't. Let's just say Ben could intubate or extubate anybody any day of the week now. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the NICU on Christmas Day: After many days of being baffled by a baby the doctors finally all agreed that his issues were being caused because of his heart. Duh. Rambo showed really early on that he was not the typical child with this defect. He wasn't eating and when he was, he wasn't keeping anything down. He was constantly breathing fast, like really fast: 110 bpm was average. And he couldn't seem to do the breathing ...