[evil]NEC[/evil] I'm having a rough night and just needed to get this out, sorry if some of it's incoherent..
how can things go from finally looking up to suddenly crashing and finding out that your baby's gut perfed and they had to remove his entire colon, yes the whole thing, half of the the ileum, and oh yes, by the way, his spleen was bleeding uncontrolably so we took that too.
This little guy, who is 'my' baby came to us in DIC over 50 days ago at 28weeks gest, fought his way through it, had some issues with extubation and feeding, 'normal' head, as in no IVH or PVL, (but how normal can it really be after coding and some bleeding from his DIC?) but finally looked like he was ready to extubate for good, 'recovered' from pneumatosis(sp?) (14day gut rest and antibiotics, completely asymptomatic and a clear xray from very early on) and was finally beginning to advance on his feeds. He truly looked like he had finally turned the corner and was heading in the right direction! He needed laser eye surgery, and I thought, good at least we can do it before we stress him with extubation, but i guess he didn't agree.
He crased for me today. I'll admit, I didn't think he was going to make it out of the OR, but he did, and I just called to check on him and he's still with us, but he's virtually maxed on Dopa, 100%FiO2, PRBCs, the list goes on. Are we really helping him? I was fine all day while taking care of him, everyone at work was great about stopping by to see how i was doing and if i needed any help, I was even ok on the way home, but after checking on him it really sunk in. I am so split becase if he does make it, will he have any quality of life? He's fought through so much already, I want to give him every chance. But at the same time, is this his way of saying thanks for trying, but i'm tired. I can't decide which would be 'better', (not the word i'm looking for, but the best i can find after being at work for over 14 hours and knowing I have to be there again in a few hours) going in this morning and hearing that we did all we could and he passed away overnight, or see him still there fighting. my heart breaks either way.
I love my job and can't think of doing anything else, but at this moment, I wish our job truly was how many people view it, holding tiny babies and feeding them all day long.
I'm sorry for the rambling, I just needed to share this with some people that truly understand.