Happy & Sad

This is a bittersweet post. Colton was extubated yesterday (Thursday) at 4:30 pm. He is still going strong and only on nasal cannulas. We are so proud of how well he is doing on his breathing! I got to hold him today without the ventilator, oh how much easier it is. Little guy can turn his head at will and not have to worry about his tube! This is the sweet part of the post.

The other part is that Colton also had an MRI on Thursday of his head. This was a follow-up to the siezure episodes that he had awhile back. Truthfully, we didn't expect them to find anything....wrong. We were told last night that Colton has (to quote the doctors) "extensive brain injury". Of course a million things start running through our minds. We were devastated. Basically, because of lack of oxygen to the brain, Colton has an underdeveloped Cerebellum as well as ischemia (tissue damage) and infarction (death of tissue) to much of the right side of his brain. The doctors terms, again, sound devastating. What it boils down to is that we have a lot of unknowns in front of us. Will Colton be normal but with severe delays? Will he not be normal? We don't know any of the answers and the doctors won't either. We just have to take it milestone by milestone and work really hard with him to give him the best we can. Donny and I heard stories from both the doctors and nurses about kids with much worse brain scans that ended up being ok. We will hold out hope! Whatever the outcome, we will love our boy dearly and know that he is a fighter. Keep praying for him!

We went a little overboard on the pics but it is the first glimpse at his upper lip! :) http://www.flickr.com/photos/29664626@N07/sets/72157609662083178/