Big Day at OHSU

Let me back up to yesterday at 1pm when we met with Dr Herbert re: Fin's RSV. She said he was doing actually better - although still a bit tight in the chest. Reluctantly, she let us go. We headed up to Portland in anticipation of this morning's meeting with Dr Koch.

The appointment went really well. In a nutshell, he said:

• Griffin's MRI is really an unreliable tool in diagnosis basically becuase MRIs on brains that small are so hard to perform/read. Their brains are so underdeveloped, there's a greater amount of water in the brain than a normal adult brain, and angles on a brain that small can make things appear that aren't truly there. What they DID see that was read as an abnormality looked appropriate for the infectious process that he had.
• Developmentally, Griffin is right on target - if not more advanced for his age.
• He is combining Griffin's phenobarbital to only be given once a day instead of twice - and at night so he'll sleep all night. With that said, he said he was comfortable tapering him off Phenobarbital starting the first week of March, if the EEG done today proves normal. Unfortunately, the tapering process takes 6 weeks to do. So, we'll be done with Phenobarbital by April 21st.
• Griffin had a repeat EEG after all of his seizing activity in the hospital. The fact that it was completely normal 4 days later was amazing because if he had a major problem, despite phenobarbital, there would still be some brain (not physical) activity on the EEG 4 days later. This is reassuring.
• We are doing a follow-up MRI but we're doing it when his brain is more developed at 5-6mo old. The older the brain, the more reliable the image.

Dr Koch was very reassuring and confident. He was a spitting image of Dustin Hoffman in Meet the Fockers - it was great! I'm very thankful Nate's mom came with us - just the extra support was nice. We stayed in the Marriott downtown and man that was a nice place!! We parked Valet and I used to think the extra $ it cost was just a waste of money ... but it really is worth every dime!

Nate gave his notice and because he works on an assignment-basis, they told him he didn't need to stay 2 weeks. So he's taking next week off and starting the following Monday at Weyerhaeuser. We might head to California to visit my dad and Jo while he's off. They haven't gotten to really see Griffin, as the day they came to see him we were admitted to the NICU.

I'm fried right now and so I'm taking a hot shower and going to bed. Thank you all to the thoughts and prayers. It seems they've been answered and there is a major weight off my shoulders!