Lucas Camilo

Yesterday was a pretty good day for Lucas, so good that he got to come out of the incubator for a while and lie on Krista’s chest (more about that later.)  We thought we’d try to give an overview of some of the things Lucas is dealing with right now, keeping in mind that the doctors still don’t have a big-picture diagnosis.

On the positive side, his Biliruben levels are down meaning the jaundice is subsidizing, which in turn means fewer intense blue lights around him.  Lucas emerged into the world rather bruised up so they expected the jaundice to come, and it got pretty bad at one point, but the treatment seems to be working now.  Lucas had a pretty nasty shiner in his left eye when he was born, but that’s also gotten better.

In addition to the bruises, Lucas had a lot of little red dots on his skin which doctors attributed to a problem with blood clotting.  During the first few days of his life he had a couple blood transfusions because of suspected deficiencies of certain proteins that was causing some internal bleeding to not clot.  That problem also seems to be getting better, though even the hematologist is a little baffled by why he had those issues in the first place.  At any rate, his blood tests have improved, the red dots have all but gone away, and the bruised are going down, all good signs.

He also has respiratory issues and is still only breathing with assistance from a ventilator.  This is common with premature babies, and over the past few days he’s started to breathe more over the ventilator, which is good to see.  But having a big tube down his throat means there are lots of secretions that he can’t deal with properly, which clogs up his throat and lungs even more.  He’s getting some respiratory therapy which seems to be clearing things up and hopefully he’ll be breathing on his own soon enough.

Which brings us to little Lucas’s brain.  Right now, there are various abnormal brain functions that the doctors have observed which may have been caused by what they call “brain thrombosis”, or a clot in his brain in utero.  Some premature babies have bleeding in their brains and/or abnormal brain activity which they can heal from.   So the doctors seem to be moving away from the possible neuro-musculor disorder which we reported on a few days ago and towards a diagnosis that involves the central nervous system.  This of course is an equally scary scenario, though even if there is damage there are possibilities of getting better and having normal or near normal brain functions in the future.

At this point we  just don’t know.  We will speak with the neurologist in the coming days and Lucas Camilo will likely be transferred to the Children’s Hospital next door where they can provide even more special care.

We do know that is Lucas is still very sick.  But the little signs of improvement – more body movement, better skin tone, eyes opening more often, heart rate becoming more steady – give us hope every day that he will get better.