Just to catch you up on Joseph and our story. Joseph was diagnosed at 20 weeks with CDH, Congential Diaphragmatic Hernia. His diaphram did not fully form in the womb and his abdominal organs (stomach, spean, bowel, and liver) were in his chest. This defect crammed all of those organs in the chest and did not allow the lungs to form correctly. Joseph was born on June 1st, 2010. He was immediately ventilated and at 3 days old had surgery to repair the DH. Dr. Kays went in to find that Joseph only had 40% of his diaphram so he created the other 60% with a patch. He moved all of the organs into abdomin, rearranged the bowel and then explored the lungs. Joseph has a full right lung but only a forth of a lung on the left. Since surgery he has made great progress. He is off the ventilator now and eating well. We still have some time left in the hospital but hopefully we will go home soon.
We are at Shands Hospital. At Shands there are 3 levels of the NICU, level 3 is the most severe cases and then as the patients get better they are moved to NICU 2 then 1. Joseph spent the first 16 days of his life in NICU 3, he was moved today to the NICU 2. The NICU 2 is crowded and noisy but the staff is nice and they deeply care for their patients. In the NICU 3 we had some friends around us and knew all the nursing staff, now we have to make new friends and learn the staff all over again. Despite the difficulty to us, we are extremely happy that Joseph is doing so well.
