Serenity: 4 months 1 day (Corrected age: 2 weeks)

Oh wow! I just realized that Serenity turned FOUR months old yesterday! Wow. Four months! What an amazing blessing!!

As for how she is doing, all we know is that she still has fluid building up in the right side of her chest between her lung and ribcage. This is preventing her right lung from being able to function properly. Where we have to be careful is with the ventilator (which she is now back on), and making sure the pressures aren't so high that they cause her good lung to perforate, but still have enough pressure to help the bad lung keep functioning at least somewhat.

Next is her intestines. There is most likely a blockage of some sort. To what degree, we are not sure. We don't know if it's a full blockage, or partial. And there is talk of doing an upper GI in the possible near future to determine the degree of blockage.

Serenity's numbers are now reflecting she has an infection. The doctors are not sure where the infection is coming from, but they are going to give her medicine to try to dry up the fluid in her chest and hope that that is the source of the infection and we will be able to get that under control.

So basically, we are at somewhat of a standstill. We can't really do much of anything until we get the fluid figured out, and until she grows. The doctors and surgeons are now saying that they most likely will not tough her until she is closer to 5 pounds. The downside is, she can't eat, and she isn't growing very quickly on TPN. And what's worse, is they need her to get close to the 5 pound mark by the first of December. Reason being, the surgeons want to send her to Detroit for the surgery for her intestines because there is more support there overall. She most likely will not handle the surgery well, so they want it to be done at the best possible place.

That is all my brain can think of right now. Please be patient with updates. We love that every cares so much and is concerned--we just ask that everyone be considerate of our emotional and mental need to only have to explain all of Serenity's updates once.