Which comes first . . . ?

I know that's a rather strange title for our blog. But it kind of sums up the conversation I just had with Nathan's pediatrician. We were wanting more information about the duct in his lung that is not closing up properly. Our questions were:

1) is the duct problem related to his congenital diaphragmatic hernia that he was born with and had surgery for?
Dr. Jijon said that it's not necessarily part of the same problem, but rather a complication that came about because of the hernia.

2) what is the duct problem?
Dr. Jijon said that they aren't sure which comes first (hence my post title today). They aren't sure if the high arterial pressure in the lung causes the duct not to close OR if the duct not closing is causing the high arterial pressure.

So we don't necessarily know the causes of the problem, but the plan is to continue keeping Nathan on oxygen while he's sleeping to help out with pressure. And we will be doing another ultrasound in 2 months to see if there has been any improvement.

3) At what age would they normally do the surgery to close the duct?
Dr. Jijon said that he doesn't want to get ahead of things and predict this. . . he'd rather continue with the oxygen and see how things go and then make a decision. So that's an unknown for us at this point - we'll just see how God continues to work.

4) do we still need to be keeping Nathan at home and not taking him out much?
Dr. Jijon said that we can now lead a "normal life" (yea, right - try hauling around a 20 lb. tank with you all the time! smiles!). And so now it's possible to take Nathan out on walks and do some of the regular errands and so on that I'd normally be doing. Especially, now that Nathan is awake more, it will be easier to do this as he won't need to be connected to the tank while awake! This was encouraging news!

So I wanted to share this update with you from the doctor yesterday and thank you for your continued notes, encouragement and prayers! Sometimes it can be easy to be discouraged, especially finding out that Nathan might need another surgery - but your prayers and encouragement help us to keep positive in all of this!

Thanks so much! Oh and Nathan seems to have recovered just fine from his vaccines and is back to normal today - his usual smiley, happy self - and he's talking up a storm - the only problem is that we can't understand what he's saying! He likes the words Bla, bla, bla and la, la, la a lot though!