Tough Guy

I have never seen someone work so hard to breathe as Matthew did last night.  He is by far the strongest person I've ever known.  He was using every muscle in his body to get the air he needed.  His oxygen saturation rates were great, but his little muscles were shaking on every inhale and exhale, he was drenched in sweat, and you could hear him breathing from down the hall.  Since it was just over 2 hours from his previous treatment, the on-call doctor was called in and his breathing treatments were increased to every 2 hours as needed.   I was scared for him, but moments after his breathing treatment, Matthew was rolling around in the bed, playing with his rattle. 

Through the night Matthew has needed the more frequent breathing treatments.  With the treatments today, he'll get another dose of steroids and we'll continue to pray that he can finally conquer this.

Matthew is a tough guy who has been through so very much in his short life. 

First it was the intestinal malrotation.  Matthew's intestines were twisted, making it difficult to pass food through his GI tract.  After a several hour surgery, where they opened him up, took out his intestines and reinserted them into a different pattern, he waited 4 days for his intestines to wake back up from their slumber and start passing food again.  Oh, and they nicked his urethra inserting the foley catheter during that procedure, which made him bleed and unable to pass urine for a few days.  Matthew battled through it all.

Then Matthew was in congestive heart failure.  We spent months trying to figure out what it was, because he was too puggy to be a 'heart baby' and his oxygen saturation levels were too high 'for it to be his heart'.  But it was his heart, he's just a tough guy.  Because of the heart defect from birth, his heart was sending 4x the amount of blood to his lungs as through the rest of his body.  His heart had been overworked for 7 months.  When they went in to fix his overworked heart, he was slow to wake and struggled to breathe after the heart catheterization.  And Matthew battled through it all.

Then Matthew's skull was starting to pinch his brain.  They cut out part of his skull, reshaped it and put it back in.  He bled profusely while on the operating room table.  His head was swollen and unrecognizable for a week.  And Matthew battled through it all.

So, now he's fighting a swollen throat.  He's battling through it as well.  He is our sweet baby Matthew, but he's also one tough little guy!