Updates: 05.06.2011

♥TEAM CALEB♥ bracelets are on their way!! :D To try to help the George family with costs incurred during Caleb's stay, I'll be offering them in exchange for donations to the family. If you'd like to have one, please contact Rebecca @ teamcalebgeorge@gmail.com ♥ They'll be available in child & adult sizes. Have a great weekend! ♥TEAM CALEB♥

Updates: 05.05.2011

New Team Caleb Default! 

We met with the doctors today and they are all very happy with how well Caleb is doing. The surgeon said he is very happy that they didn't have to do as much to his heart as they were thinking they might have to do looking at the echos of his heart before he was born. They can't give any timeline on him coming home because its all going to depend on him.  They are going to try to take him off of CPAP again tomorrow and try the nasal cannulas tomorrow. If he does well with that we can hold him. They did put him back on some pain meds around the clock and are going to slowly wean him off of them since he is having withdrawals from them. :( I hate seeing him have the jitters from that. Once he is back on just the oxygen with the nasal cannulas they will start trying bottle feeds and if those go well we can try to nurse.

Updates: 05.04.2011

Caleb was having a hard time expanding his lungs enough today and his sats kept dropping so they went ahead and put the cpap on him. He still breathes on his own but this helps him to breathe a little easier

8 pm: Caleb is still doing well. He was having a hard time fully expanding his lungs still bc he still has old secretions in his lungs from his pulmonary hemorrhage. Because his sats kept dropping today they decided to put him on the cpap. He still breathes on his own but the cpap gives a continuous positive pressure flow of oxygen and it Just helps to get him to fully expand his lungs. This isn't a step backwards, he just needed a little more help. They are still doing breat...hing treatments and also were going to do another treatment to help relieve any inflammation around his vocal cords that could also be contributing to him having to work so hard to breathe since he had some sounds thy could hear in his throat that would indicate that.

He was still having some issues with fully digesting his feedings but it was slowly getting better.

We have a conference with all of the doctors tomorrow to kind of go over everything and discuss the next steps. Will update more then.

Thank you all so much for the continued prayers and support. We are so blessed!

Updates: 05.03.2011

From Grandma: I love you Team Caleb! Thank you for all the prayers and support. Caleb is breathing on his own now. ♥♥ TEAM CALEB ♥♥  I cannot say enough about the doctors, surgeons and nurses at Rady's Childrens Hospital, they are amazing. It takes a special kind of person with a huge heart to do what they do, especially the NICU nurses. GOD BLESS YOU!

Updates: 05.02.2011

6 pm: The doctors were giving Caleb another day on the ventilator today since they are still getting old blood out. I just spoke with his nurse and his last gasses were much better so they are going to give him a steroid overnight to make sure his vocal chords aren't swollen to take out the breathing tube. Then the plan is to take it out in the morning! He is doing great with them upping his feeds through his tube too!

Updates: 05.01.2011

9 am: Just called and talked to Caleb's nurse (my favorite nurse too!) and he is doing great. The surgeon is there to take out his drainage chest tube and then the plan for the day is to try to wean him off of the ventilator! :-) All of our prayers are being answered! Thank you all so much!!!

Updates: 04.30.2011

10 am:  Someone is ECMO FREE!! 

9:30 pm: Just talked to Caleb's nurse and he is doing great. She was giving him a small dose of medicine to calm him down b/c she had just moved him to his left side and since he isn't used to this it upset him a little bit. She did say though that he had only had one dose of the medicine earlier today and that is a great thing. Before he was getting it around the clock. Go Caleb!! ♥ Team Caleb ♥

Updates: 04.29.2011

10 am: Scott and I are taking split shifts at the hospital today. Both of us being gone a few hours every day was getting to be too much for Alex. Scott is there now and he said they are going to do a trial run off of ECMO to see how Caleb does. His lungs improve every day and the bleeding hasn't completely stopped so they would really like to get him off of ECMO, but its all up to Caleb at this point. ♥ Team Caleb ♥


5 pm: So they took Caleb off of ECMO on an hour trial today and he did great so the plan is to take him off for good tonight or tomorrow depending on the surgeons schedule. Thank you for all of your continued prayers...they are working!! ♥ Team Caleb ♥


10 pm: Scott just called and they took Caleb of of ECMO. But now they can't get his blood pressure to stabilize. If they can't get it to they will have to put him back on ECMO again. Hopefully they can get it to stabilize soon.

Updates: 04.28.2011

I apologize for the delay on posting updates.   Catching up now :) 


9 am: Called the NICU to see if there was an update as far as getting him off of ECMO today. They ended up having to open him back up to check to see why he was bleeding so much. The Dr didnt have the report from the cardiologist back yet, but they said they would have it back by the time they got there in a couple of hours. Please pray the bleeding stops for good and he is healthy enough for them to get him off of ECMO.


Noon: The bleeding has slowed down and as long as it stays this way then they are going to leave Caleb on the ECMO for a couple of more days to try to get his lung function better but if it doesn't stay down then they are going to try to get him off the ECMO because of the blood thinners. ♥♥ Team Caleb ♥♥

Updates: 04.27.2011

Team Caleb we need your prayers. The hospital called and has decided to do surgery now to close the PDA. This is scary with him on ECMO bc of the risk or bleeding from the blood thinners. Also they have to leave his chest open for 24-48 hours after surgery and this runs the risk of infection. Please pray that everything goes well and there are no complications.




10 am: Everything went well with the surgery today and the doctors said Calebs lungs never looked better. They did a trial today of taking him off the ECMO and he did well so the doctors are now in the process of removing the canulas from his neck and Caleb will be ECMO free....GREAT NEWS! ♥♥♥


Change of plans. Cardiac surgeons had an emergency surgery come up so taking him off of ECMO will have to wait until tomorrow.

Updates: 04.26.2011

So today was another step forward for Caleb. The breathing treatments are slowly working so they are doing them every 8 hours. We talked to the Cardiologist today and he was talking about "when Caleb goes home". This brought such joy to my heart and are the best words I have ever heard. They are still waiting for his ductus arteriosus (PDA) to close. Once they get his lungs better they will wean him off of ECMO and will soon be deciding what to do about the PDA. If it doesn't close soon they will have to do surgery to close it. We are meeting with the cardiologists and neonatologists on Thursday afternoon to go over what the next steps are to get him healthy enough to go home. 

Thank you all so much for your continued support and prayers. We will never be able to thank you all enough! They are working!

Updates: 04.25.2011

1 pm: "Caleb is getting a breathing treatment right now. They need to get his lungs to open up more. His heart can handle being off of ECMO but not his lungs.

This treatment can cause bleeding in the lungs though.

Please pray that 1)the treatment works so he can get off of ECMO and 2) it does not cause any bleeding.

Also he smiled at us today :-) and is making a ton of faces at us. I am so glad to have gotten to see these things.

Thank you all for your continued support!"

5:30 pm: So the 1st treatment went well. They are doing an x-ray tonight to see if the treatment helped him to expand his lungs any. Then they were planning on doing another treatment tonight. So pray that this treatment worked and the xray shows improvement in his lung expansion and that the next treatment causes no bleeding. Thank you so much!! 

♥ Team Caleb ♥

Updates: 04.24.2011

HAPPY FIRST EASTER CALEB!  

From Caleb's mommy


I wanted to put a separate post up to just say thank you so much for all of the love we receive every day here. There is no way I can keep up with it all and respond to everyone because there are so many people posting (which is an amazing thing!), but I do see all of them and just love them all so much. They don't go unnoticed. We are so appreciative and are so blessed to have so many people pulling for him..even complete strangers.


Also I have had a couple of people ask me just out of curiosity so I wanted to address it. Some of the more recent photos of Caleb you can see that his head is "misshapen". This is because his head is always in one spot because of the ECMO machine (the cannulas are in his neck in the arteries there), but the doctors said that because his skull has not begun to fuse, everything will go back to normal once he is off of ECMO and able to move his head around more.


Evening Update:  "No changes to update today. They tried turning down the ECMO some and he didn't handle it well so they turned it back up and they are just letting him rest."

Updates: 04.23.2011

April 23 at 10:15pm "We spent the majority of the day at the hospital today. Caleb was having a "rest day" today. When they took him off of ECMO yesterday for the trial hour, he ended up having some bleeding into his lungs which put him a couple of steps back. They were letting him rest and get his strength today and will try another trial tomorrow or Monday. They are just trying to figure out the next steps to take to get him off of ECMO and go from there. It's a "trial" thing really. They let Caleb lead the way and do whats best for him. He is still strong and fighting, but still very sick. Please keep praying and asking God to watch over our sweet baby boy.

Thank you so so much to you all for all of your love and support. There is no way we could ever repay any of you for all that you have done for Caleb. Thank you thank you thank you." (from Sarah, Caleb's Mommy)

Updates: 04.22.2011

Morning: "Okay change of plans. They did another echo on his heart this morning and saw improvement and his numbers improved over night so they turned the ecmo machine down. They are postponing the surgery until he is off of ecmo bc they would rather him be off of that for surgery."

Mommy was discharged from the hospital today.

Look who opened his eyes for the first time since surgery!!!

Updates: 04.21.2011

Caleb's mommy was told tonight that Caleb will be having the hybrid procedure done in the morning.   Please keep praying ♥TEAM CALEB♥

More information will be posted as it becomes available. 

To keep up to date with the instant updates, please make sure you've added the Facebook page linked on the sidebar there.  

Thank you so much for all the love and support

Caleb, we're all praying for you & your family!  

Updates: 04.20.2011

12 pm: Good afternoon ♥TEAM CALEB♥ -- Scott's on his way to Sarah with some "good news" so we should have an amazing update soon!! Remember to keep sharing the page with your friends & family. God does amazing things and there's so much power in prayer!! 


 1 pm: "They saw significant improvement in his heart and they are starting to wean him off ECMO!!!" GO CALEB!! :D ♥TEAM CALEB♥


8 pm: Caleb will not actually start weaning off of ECMO yet, because his lactates aren't at the perfect number to start, but he's still doing well and Mommy's going to get some rest now. Keep praying & thank you for all the support for the George family! ♥TEAM CALEB♥

Updates: 04.19.2011

12:00am: Caleb is on the ECMO machine, has acid in his blood, and will be having the cath and probably the hybrid procedure done in the morning to see if his left ventricle is any better.

Sarah's doing well recovering in her room and will get to see him in the morning.


12:30 pm:  Caleb just got back from his procedure and the doctor said it went great. Caleb's heart responded well and they already saw shrinkage of the left side. They are going to monitor his aorta to watch for any shrinkage and probably start to wean him off of the ecmo machine tomorrow.


4:30 pm: Sarah just talked with Caleb's nurse and is asking ♥TEAM CALEB♥ for extra prayers, please. He is having a hard time maintaining his blood pressure so they're having to give him lots of blood products which is causing him to swell. Pray! Pray! Pray! C'mon Caleb, let's get that BP stabilizing!! ♥   Results from the ultrasound of Caleb's brain should be in later tonight.

10:30 pm: Last update for tonight :) Mommy & Daddy visited Caleb and his blood pressure is back up and doing better. They met with the neonatologist and there is no hydrocephalus! From what he could tell from the report Caleb is missing the Corpus Callosum in his brain. This shouldn't affect him too much, according to the doc. Sleep well, and keep praying 


♥TEAM CALEB♥

     

Happy Birthday, Caleb!!!

For those of you not on Facebook, from a post from a member of Team Caleb (Amy):

"Caleb George has arrived at 6lbs 4oz. Grandma says he has beautiful coloring and skin and looks great! They have put in a breathing tube for precaution and baby and dad are on their way next door to the childrens hospital. Sarah did great and should be in recovery soon. Our first hurdle is down and it goes to show that prayers can be answered!!! Let's keep them coming!! ♥ Team Caleb ♥"

and from Caleb's dad, Scott:

"Caleb George is here. He came at 8:49 pm 6 lbs 4 oz and now is with the wonderful hands at Rady's children hospital. Pray everything goes well."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET BABY CALEB & CONGRATULATIONS TO THE GEORGE FAMILY!

Sarah recently updated they will be doing the echo on him tonight and possibly the ultrasound of his brain.


Isn't he just BEAUTIFUL??? *swoon*

Keep praying!! 

♥Team Caleb♥

Updates: 04.18.2011

The George Family just left the surgeons and are going back to labor and delivery to have Sarah's blood pressure monitored and possibly be admitted. The echo will be done around 3:30 and I'll update as I get more information. 


EDIT @630 pm:  Sarah's being admitted with contractions 3 minutes apart.

Keep praying!

♥TEAM CALEB♥

Appointments this week

This week the George family will be meeting with the Cardiologist, Neurologist, and Perinatologist to discuss course of action.  Monday is Card, Tuesday is Neuro, Wednesday is Peri.   Please keep them in your prayers and remember to spread the word about Team Caleb.   There's power in prayer and the family can use all the support they can get.  We appreciate all of you taking the time to come by and to read Caleb's story and to follow as he's going to soon make his big arrival.   Love and support will help the family so much through all this. If you have any questions or just want to leave some well wishes you can do so here (you don't need a blogspot account to comment) or on the Facebook page.

♥TEAM CALEB♥

Welcome

I'd like to thank you all for stopping by Team Caleb's page.   Baby Caleb will be arriving any day now and I know there's many of us who would like to keep up with him and most importantly pray for him.   His family is going to be very busy with his care & bonding so updates will be posted here and on his Facebook page.  His family can use all the prayers they can get right now, so please pass on this page to all your friends!

I've offered to help Sarah, Caleb's Mommy, with keeping up with this and the Facebook page while they're focusing on his care.   We've set up a separate email address and paypal donations will go directly to the George family.   There's a button on the sidebar if you'd like to donate anything, as we all know how hospital costs and all the extras can add up SO fast!   Anything donated goes direct to them.    If you have any questions, you can also email teamcalebgeorge@gmail.com.   

Thank you so much for your support!!  

♥TEAM CALEB♥