such a fighter

Just a quick little addendum as I promised. They changed up the exact procedure today, and instead of going in with a catheter to the blood clot itself, they decided to pump the medicine into the body systemically, which means that they didn't have to do any kind of cutting or other surgery. Dr. Barton said that this is just as effective as the other route without the trauma to the veins of running a catheter in. So that's good. The drip started at 3:30 today and will end in a few hours at 3:30 a.m. We have seen Jack respond fairly well to the medicine; his blood gas came back very good. Also, some really great news is that he is dropping swelling, not only since the medicine was administered, but since early this morning. He even opened his eyes for the first time in over a week today. That was awesome! We're not done with the medicine yet, so we still have a bit farther to go, but everything looks pretty good so far. The only misstep in it has been that he bled a little bit around the catheter spot on his leg, but it wasn't too bad and has since either stopped or slowed to a point that it's not a worry.

Tomorrow at 8 is when we'll really get to see how effective the medicine is. They will be taking him to the catheter lab and running a catheter, releasing a dye in his chest to see how well the tPA cleared out the veins in and around his heart. From there, with God's grace, we'll see a very high dissolve rate and won't need to do a second dose of the medicine. Please pray for this to be the case! (Granted, most of you won't see this until after we've already gotten the results back, but pray for Jack anyway!) If it turns out that it's just a partial dissolve, the medicine will be administered again on Thursday. Hopefully, however, we'll have a really good result from today's dose.

Praise God! Praise God because our baby is such a fighter! He's been through a lot of tribulation, and he's still kicking. Praise God because the swelling is coming down, and we can see his eyes again. Praise God because He's worth it regardless!

God bless.

Tony and Angi