We continued doing chest PT on him. By Tuesday morning, miraculously, his congestion had cleared to the point he didn't even need a chest x-ray! On Tuesday, he was also switched to oral medications. He also started gaining weight. He had made it back to his birth weight on Tuesday evening.
We were discharged on Wednesday, August 16. Jeff and I finally were able to bring our baby boy home with us. It was a very happy day. This is Jacob and I on the day of discharge:
We have had outpatient visits at Duke in August, September, November, January and April. At Jacob's last appointment, on April 24, 2007, his echocardiogram looked great, and when the cardiologist listened to his chest, they could not even detect a heart murmur. For the first time in his short life, they told us we wouldn't need to come back to Duke for 6 months. In fact, he was 11 months old before he had a month without seeing a doctor!
Thank you for reading!
Today, August 1, 2007, Jacob is one. He is the happiest baby.
We are so thankful to our friends and family who supported us so much during Jacob’s first weeks and throughout the last year. The outpouring of love, kindness and prayers from near and far has been amazing. We are truly blessed and our prayers have been answered.
I hope Jacob's Story has helped to raise
awareness for Congenital Heart Defects.
6 comments:
I really enjoyed your story - as you know I could draw many parallels. Happy birthday to the little hero - so glad he is doing so well now. Jacob didn't take nearly as well to the balloon septastomy - even after that they couldn't get his stats about the high 70's - and finally did surgery early because they fell down tot he 50's. It is always interesting to read other's stories and see the similarities and the differences. Thanks again for sharing.
thanks for sharing your story. i enjoyed reading the details. as gooyj :) writes . . . i could also draw parallels. :)
congratulations to you and Jacob on the first birthday! We are sooo blessed.
Yea for happy endings! I like how you broke up Jacob's story into easy to read "chapters." I have to find a way to summarize our experiences for a condensed version on Jacob's story. I took notes about each day and I am so glad I did because afterwards all the days blurred together in my memory (like: Was the PICC line on the 3 or 4 day?). I actually did not start writing it out in journal form until Jacob was 4 months old. I was amazed at the clarity and emotion that came back as I tried to write it all out. My husband wants to write more of our experience from his view but it seams to be to close to home for him still to revisit those memories. Anyways, I enjoyed reading about your Jacob and look forward to many more happy updates!
Thanks Christina!
I journaled daily on Caringbridge, so I used that as my "notes" to write his story in honor of his first birthday, so that site definitely has more detail then the recap version here. Jacob was the featured story on KidsWithHeart.org for his birthday month, so I took this version and condensed it even more for that site!
I like the way you broke things down into NICU days.
Thank you for sharing your story Jenni. My son was born in August 2007 and also had TGA. It was interesting to see the similarities between each of our experiences. It's somehow comforting to find people who have experienced similar struggles and challenges. I am new to the whole blogging thing -- I really wish I had discovered it sooner -- but I will be posting my son Joshua's story sometime in the near future.
Hi Jenni,
I'm working on a Heart Kids link list for my blog and I was wondering if you would mind if I added Jacob to the list.
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