Lung Scan Results

So... we went to Children's for the lung scan. It was pretty uneventful. Caleb doesn't think much of getting IVs, but he does seem to like the test. He let the nurses velcro him into place without much issue. When the cameras came down he looked at them and even pet them a little bit. After a while he decided things were too boring and went to take a nap.

I figured out why I thought I saw two functioning lungs on the scan. It turns out that the camera takes a front and a back view. What I thought was two lungs was the right lung forwards, and then the right lung backwards. There should really be four lungs on the screen. This time he did indeed have four, which meant that the balloon worked and his lungs were functioning.

After several days (hey, wait, weren't we supposed to find out that day?? Why yes, yes we were!) we found out that his lung blood distribution wasn't as even as we had hoped. They were hoping for 70/30 (55/45 is normal). Caleb turned out a 87/13.

But this means something good: The ballooned artery is still open.

The next step was supposed to be a stent and surgery, but the doctors at Children's got together to discuss what to do. They were faced with the probability that the ballooning would close again. The right side of his heart, however, was showing no signs of strain from pumping the blood unevenly. The key turned out to be what was going on *after* the block.

For some reason, Caleb's blood vessels are larger than normal. Not good, not bad, it just is what it is. But because of this, they want to put off the surgery. They are still hopeful that this bloodflow can grow.

I'm talking to him nearly every night about this. He is definitely working on growing up! He's getting huge. He's glad that he doesn't have to have any more operations at the moment. And so am I.

They are going to be watching this very closely (big surprise there!). If everything stays open, they're going to see what develops. If it doesn't stay open, they'll take further action, which will probably be a stent through the chest wall. September 26th is our next appointment. So let's hope that things keep growing like he does. :)