Yesterday was a pretty telling day. For 4 weeks now, we have hoped and hoped that Mr. Bug would begin to improve, and he has made some improvement in some areas, and but he has made no improvement in others, and the gains he has made have been so tiny compared to what he would needed to have made to have an actual chance at survival. There are so many things that can go wrong while one is on life support. Multi-organ failure on its own is almost impossible to survive. Multiple, deadly drug-resistant infections in a person with a compromised immune system are almost impossible to survive. Multi-organ failure AND multiple, deadly drug-resistant infections in a person with a compromised immune system leaves a person with the slimmest chance of survival. He’d have a better chance in the crossfire of a war zone, or ground zero of a nuclear blast.
Yesterday the thing we hoped would not happen happened. The infection has eaten through Mr. Bug’s lungs, and he is dying. The lungs are encased in this really nice sac that protects them and keep them all together. However, when you have a hole in your lung, air escapes into the space between the lungs and the sac, and the sac fills with air, making less space for the lungs to expand. This causes parts of the lung to “colapse.” Furthermore, as the sac fills with air, it pushes against the heart, which decreases its ability to pump blood efficiently. There is something that can be done. Tubes can be placed in the sac to drain the air so the lungs can de-colapse, and there is less pressure on the heart. Unfortunately, the place where the air has escaped into is located neatly under a bunch of arteries, and the likelihood that one of these would be punctured is high. Surgery to repair the resulting bleed, if it could be repaired, would likely kill him because he is already so weak and compromised. Everyone agrees that at this point, that this intervention would actually kill him. The other option is to leave him alone, don’t offer any new intervention, and see if the holes heal by themselves. His lungs are so infected that this is extremely unlikely. However, it is his only hope. The nurses expected him to die yesterday, especially since his blood pressure over the day went from 112/70 down to 60/30, which is not something a body can maintain for long . However, somehow, his blood pressure went back up, and this moring it was 95/50. This is nice, because it means he has a little more time, but he will likely end up in cardiac arrest when his heart decides it’s had enough of this, and then it will be all over. He is not in pain, he will be sleeping soundly, and he is on opiates, so one wonders what kinds of wild adventures he is having while the rest of us are in agony!
He is not dead yet, and I know there are more miracles to be had in the world. He really needs one today. Something significant. He needs whole new lungs, not a transplant, but somehow he needs his own lungs to be new again. The alternative is that he will run from his amazing dreams he is having into the arms of Jesus. And really, nothing could be better!
It could be any day, any minute, now! We love our baby!
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