Jadon Michael Foster

I know that many of you already know all of this but here is the full story.

This has been quite a week in the Foster Family. On Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 4:37pm my son Jadon Michael Foster joined our family. Shortly, after his birth the nurses were having trouble getting his feet and legs to pink up (they were staying blue). The nurses began to listen to his heart and one side of his chest sounded quite differently than the other. At Lake Forest Hospital they have a member of the Children’s Memorial Hospital staff in Chicago who is available just for times like this. They took Jadon in for an X-ray and in a matter of an hour they diagnosed him with a Diaphragmatic Hernia.

Now before you go running off to Google Diaphragmatic Hernia (DH), you need to know that most of the issues a typical DH patient has are not seen in him. A Diaphragmatic Hernia is a hole in the diaphragm that has allowed some of the intestines to move into the chest cavity. This has caused there  to be greater pressure on his heart and lungs. They started supplementing him with oxygen and having him on a ventilator. They are using the ventilator to pretty much keep the stress off of his system.  Over the past couple of days they have been able to drop the oxygen from 23% to 21% (the same amount of oxygen that we breathe normally) and the ventilator is only set to 20 breaths per minute, down from 35. The nurses describe what he is doing as breathing “above” the ventilator, essentially the ventilator is cruise control for his breathing.

The doctors and nurses are amazed at how stable and normal he is for a DH patient. We have been able to hold him, and we have gone to see him everyday. Jadon’s neonatologist, Dr. Collins, gave him a score of 9 out of 10, and his surgeon, Dr. Barsness said that his only limitation may be that he probably won’t climb Mt. Everest or be an Olympic marathoner. Besides this hole in his diaphragm Jadon, he is a completely healthy baby boy.

They have been in no rush getting Jadon to the OR. The hernia (hole in the diaphragm) is the least of his problems and the intestines in his chest cavity are only an issue because they are putting pressure on his heart and lungs.  They want the pressure in his heart and lungs to be as low as possible and they are very happy with his progress. We are scheduled for surgery sometime on Monday, November 9.

After surgery the first step will be to get him off the ventilator, Dr. Barsness doesn’t see this taking too long with the way his vitals are looking. Once he is off the ventilator they will start feeding him through a tube and then eventually feed him from the bottle / breast. Once he has shown that his bowels are working correctly and that he is eating and gaining weight (all the stuff that they would expect him to do when he is at home).

Best case scenario is that he will be home in a week, but our goal is to have him home before Thanksgiving (I do need my boy at home to watch Thanksgiving day football).

We ask for your continued prayers for Jadon’s surgery and recovery. Eskai and I are doing well, though we’d rather have Jadon at home. Sarai is adjusting pretty well to the thought of having a baby brother (though she probably wanted a baby sister). It is still odd thinking that we are now a family of four and soon we will be all under one roof.

Thank you for your prayers and we will try to keep everyone updated after surgery and through recovery.

~ by mikefoster on November 8, 2009.