Sunday, May 23, 2010

Julia Update - with Good News!

Good news! After the MRI this morning, we learned that the blood at the back of Julia's brain IS a sub dermal hematoma. This is great because it means that her brain is not bleeding and that the blood is not in her brain - woo hoo! So it's basically like a bruise and will naturally dissipate in the way a bruise does (in 7-10 days). Once they are able to absolutely, positively confirm that there is no additional bleeding happening, she'll be able to go home. They'll do a follow up MRI to confirm in 3-5 days.

We also learned that the bleeding was NOT the result of malformed veins in the back of her head (so no surgery is necessary - yay!). Instead they saw that three of the veins in the back of her head are clotted and while her body should naturally reconcile the issue, they don't know which came first: the veins were closed and then blood essentially got stuck and clotted or the blood clotted and it's now blocking the veins. So as it clears up, they hope to be able to answer that question.

So needless to say, we're in much better spirits today. When I got to the hospital this afternoon to visit, I got to watch Julia have her first feeding (she'd been on an IV previously), so that was great and she seems to be doing really well. It's still a bit of a waiting game while we wait for everything to clear up and make sure there are no lasting effects, but we're feeling much more confident than we were. No more seizure-like behavior and all her vitals are great. Yay answered prayer!

Mark and Monica finally got a full-ish nights rest last night too so that has been a major help as well. Keep the prayers comin' though as we push through this last period ; that her body would clear the blood easily and with no problems and that the bleed didn't cause any lasting damage near her brain. (At this point they don't think there is any damage, but there is always a risk - with cerebral palsy being a worse case scenario). So like I said - thank you so much for the prayers and support and keep them coming!!

2 comments:

Emmy said...

oh yes! this is lovely news. i love little julia so much already and i cant wait to meet her and all her glory.

Kathy Rawlings said...

Great news, babies are so resiliant still Julia will be in our thought and prayers Kathy