Today I cared for the scariest baby I have seen to date.
The poor kid had some respiratory distress after birth at a small community hospital, and eventually Coded.
And a full code it was; poor boy required chest compressions, intubation, and epinephrine. By the time our NICU transport team arrived his little lungs had been pounded so hard on the ventilator that he had a
pneumothorax. Upon arrival at our NICU, he'd had enough trauma to his lungs, that he got a
hemothorax and 2 more pneumothoraces.
To date, he now has had no fewer than 11 lines of a sort coming from his poor little body. 4 of those are chest tubes.
He also has gained 1 kilogram (2.2 POUNDS) of edema (water weight). The kid looks about 6 weeks older than his gestational age and proportionate size should be.
The Docs think he may have a genetic disorder of a sort in which his lungs do not produce
surfactant, which the body normally makes to keep one's lungs from collapsing. I think this is quite probable, because his XRays show that his lungs are not shaped normally, like this:
His are shaped more like a pyramid. They want to run some genetic tests on him, but I'm not sure that'll happen because they cost about $3000 and the results won't help us to better care for him as there is no "cure" if he does have this disorder.
I'm going back in tomorrow, hopefully he's doing quite a bit better!
