Back to St Thomas'

So, on Friday, it seemed that all was going well with Jonathan being moved to The Royal Free which is much closer to home.  However, things took a dramatic turn on Sunday night ...

Here's a quick summary of what happened:

• On Saturday, we spent the day with him and he was fine.  His oxygen saturation were really good, and the nurse even commented that when he comes home, he mighn't need oxygen!  We were able to give him a bath (he had that salt and vinegar smell about him again) and play with him like we'd usually do...
• On Sunday, we spent most of the day with him, but noticed he was really exhausted, and a bit floppy.  He seemed like he wanted to wake up and play, but seemed like he was having trouble keeping his eyes open - but he's often like that when he's tired.  The nurse there was really good - she was paying us and him a lot of attention and making sure his saturations were OK, and they were fairly stable.  She said a lot of babies that get transferred can get quite tired for a few days after a transfer, as they take a while to get used to new people and surroundings, and that Jonathan's tiredness was probably down to that.
• On Sunday night at 11pm, we got a call from one of the doctors at the Royal Free to say that Jonathan's heart had stopped, and that he needed CPR to get his heart and breathing going again!
• We rushed over to the hospital, where we found a team of doctors working on Jonathan trying to stabilize his heart and breathing.  The doctor told us it took 10 minutes to get his heart beating again, and that although they'd managed to get it going, he wasn't able to breathe on his own so they had to hook him up to a ventilator.  They weren't able to get a cannula inserted to a vein to give him adrenaline, so had to inject it into the bone.
• We went through to see Jonathan, and to our relief he was awake and his eyes were open and he was moving.  He recognized us and followed our faces around which was another relief, but then we were told we needed to make room for the other doctors who had just arrived who were going to try and insert another cannula to give him some drugs  to help manage pain and put him to sleep.
• The Royal Free had to negotiate a bed for him back at St Thomas' - they were originally told there were no other beds in the whole of London for really sick babies.
• The CATS team arrived at about 1AM to transport him, but while they were assessing him, his heart stopped twice again and he needed to be resuscitated!
• At around 5AM, they managed to stabilize him and get him into the ambulance.  We all went to St Thomas' in the ambulance, and he was taken to a bed in PICU.  A cardiologist came and gave him an ultrasound and said nothing had changed in with his heart, so wouldn't need surgery immediately.  He was then transferred over to NICU.
• For the rest of Monday, they kept him on the adrenaline and also on the ventilator.  They zonked him out with an injection of something so that he would let the ventilator do all the breathing.  The nurses were really surprised to see us back in NICU after Jonathan only left them a few days ago ... they were really nice to us though, and managed to find us a room where we could stay during the day and night as we hadn't slept for ages ...
• Today, he was a bit up and down.  When he's sedated, he's mostly fine.  When he starts to wake up, he seems to wriggle around a lot and tries to breathe against the ventilator so they have to keep on sedating him.  They're also trying to find the right balance of blood pressure and air to keep him stable, but with so many variables and his own unique combination of problems, it's quite challenging.  When we left the hospital, he was fast asleep and although his blood pressure and oxygen sats were a bit on the low side, he was stable... hopefully he remains like that for the rest of the night!

Anyway, hopefully he'll be stable overnight and we'll be able to get a bit of rest.  Please pray for Jonathan if you can.