Chuckles

Meet my little nephew Charlie. Aka: Chuckles, Charles, Charlie. Isn't he darling? This picture was taken a few months ago - and let me tell you, he just gets cuter and cuter. He is so darling with his curly blond hair, and chubby cheeks. Poor little guy has been so sick. He has been struggling with complications due to a severe case of RSV and has been in the PICU at Primary Children's for several weeks now. Today my brother Nate and his sweet wife received some bad news about Charlie. My heart goes out to them as they are trying to hold it together for Charlie and their three other darlings.

We love their little family so much and hope that "Chuckles" health will begin to improve quickly.

Love you guys.

Just as I had finished writing this post, we got great news on Charlie! In my brother Nate's words: "Charlie woke up this morning in a recovery room, the Dr. there saw that he was struggling mightily to breath so he sent him back down to ICU. The ICU Dr. was going to intubate him again, but was able to calm him down enough to slow his distress. She demanded the throat Dr. take him to do the scope immediately, and finally they took him to the O.R. to put a camera deep down in his trachea. They were able to see exactly what they all assumed was happening: there was some scar tissue that had built up after being intubated, that was severely restricting his airway. Before the procedure he was breathing through a hole 1mm in diameter, after the procedure it was opened way up to almost 1 inch in diameter. They used a balloon to open it back up, and they put a topical chemo-type solution on there to inhibit the cells from re-growing. I spoke with his normal pediatrician and he told me that they are certain this type of thing happened as a result of the intubation, and that it happens in less than 1% of patients with a breathing tube.
The end solution is that his airway is open and he's breathing great again. He looks great, but a little tired and hungry. We'll probably get to take him home for good tomorrow morning! We have 2-3 more treatments with the deep broch scope, just to make sure it's continuing in the right direction.
Luckily he's a fighter, because many doctors have told us that their biggest fear was that he would just get tired of fighting so hard for breath and just give up all together."

Cute little Charlie! So happy he is doing better!