Luke's Head

You may have seen on facebook that there are some concerns about Luke's head. 

I got a call this morning from the Nurse Practitioner that saw Luke for the last three days. She started out by saying that he is doing really well. His IV will be out no later than Wednesday. He is almost at full feedings and tolerating them well with no signs of reflux at this time. All of our other kids have had some degree of reflux. He could still have it but right now it is not slowing things down for him. At five days old Luke is back up to his birth weight. He has had no issues with breathing, even while nursing. His heart sounds good. For the most part he is doing as well as any newborn. They just have to know for sure he can take all of his feedings from me before they will send him home. 

I thought that the NP was calling just to tell me things were going really well and to see if we had any questions. Unfortunately, she had some new things to tell me. She told me that Luke's skull is not normally shaped. She has been watching it the last three days and today she just felt that things did not seem right. She got the head of neonatology to look at his head. They both felt that the sutures on the side of his may be fused. If this is the case,  he will have to have surgery. It's a pretty involved surgery which involves cutting in to his skull and removing pieces of it. We don't know much now but he had a pretty involved ultrasound done on his head today and the ultrasound tech said his skull looks funky. He explained that there is no way to know if  the bones are fused by ultrasound though. They can just look and see where the plates of the skull and the sutures are. From what the ultrasound showed, he does have some problems with the plates in his head but the ultrasound can't tell the entire story so he will probably have to have a head x-ray soon. Please pray that the next tests don't stress him out too much and that we will get good news. We will do what we have to to help him but if his skull is fused, he will be having surgery and it would be at Primary Children's Hospital. It's going to be a long few months if this is the case.