Help with expenses for Matthew

Our little guy is a FIGHTER. He DOES NOT give up.

We have had a rocky 24 hours.

Matthew does not do well with sedation and has been extremely agitated. This has caused several spells of him getting very worked up for hours on end and worsening his breathing.

They have tried nearly every medication you could imagine. He is currently on more meds than I can honestly remember.

He has also needed more respiratory support and is still on the ventilator but is now on something called a SCUBA mask. It provides a seal around his face to decrease leakage of support. It also detects each respiratory effort he makes and gives him a breath each time.

He is not able to eat anything by mouth so he has something called an ND tube which gives him a continuous feed of breastmilk into his duodenum. This bypasses his stomach and decreases the risk of aspiration.

His latest chest x ray now shows some spots on his lungs that most likely indicate bacterial pneumonia. He is also positive for rhinovirus, human metopneumovirus, and parainfluenza virus.

They are trying lasix to reduce the fluid and mucous in his lungs. He is on steroids and a continuous flow of albuterol. He is also on several sedative medications.

Hopefully, this is the right path to allow his body to fight and to recover. He is looking at a longer road to recovery now but it will happen.

His outside pediatrician and pulmonologist believe he has a GI issue that is leading to silent aspiration. This would explain why he never fully recovered from his first hospitalization and why this current bout has been exacerbated. He will have a swallow study and potentially an endoscopy done once he is able to breathe on his own.

Please keep praying.

Pray for him to stay calm and not fight the sedation.

Pray for him to not be scared with this new mask covering his face completely.

Pray for the ton of meds he’s on to not cause adverse effects.

Pray for him not to need additional respiratory support.

Pray for his team to find what the root problem is so we can prevent this in the future.

Pray for his big brothers to feel just as important and comforted through their auntie, grandparents, nana, and daddy.

Pray for Remy, as he has another respiratory virus too. As well as still healing his skin from chicken pox.

Pray for Luke as he is still healing from chicken pox.

Pray for our financial situation. Between losing my job, moving, Nathan losing hours, and now our sweet boy being hospitalized for an unknown amount of time the same week I finally begin a new job, we are hurting. This weighs heavy on my shoulders right now, as I was our primary income source. I worked my ass off these last 5 years to ensure my sons would NEVER be in this type of situation again. I started at the very bottom in my field and worked my way up. And now I’m starting over.

A lot of this feels like it’s my fault.

We need a little bit of a miracle.

This is hard.

Thanks to all the people who have been supporting us all through this. It means the world.