For a Kid Too Small to Ride a Roller Coaster, This One Has Taken Us On a Ride.

 Also, Dr. Google is an alarmist asshole. 

So, when we last left Our Tiny Hero it looked like he was on the brink of being sprung from the hospital. They took him off oxygen, moved him to the step-down NICU, he was on the brink...and then...not so much.

His oxygen levels dropped again, so he was put back on minimal oxygen, and they did a echocardiogram.

And that's when the last three days turned into an insane scary roller coaster ride. 

So, the first echo wasn't conclusive because he fought them (he's not a frail, sickly baby) but they thought he has a leak between the chambers of his heart. But because he gave them hell, they redid the test a day later.

Then the test results referenced a scary and very rare heart defect. This is when I call Dr. Google an alarmist asshole. Because if you google that term, you read that this happens in .05% of babies, and it's very, very bad indeed, and usually comes with other heart abnormalities. 

Dr. Google created alarm and confusion without providing answers. As usual.

And then a day passes and while the test results were available, no doctor called to discuss them. 

By now Grandma is in full Grandma Bear mode, but I'm not my parents so I'm keeping my mouth shut and being supportive where I can, because his parents are far more capable of addressing this shit than I am. And they did. Calls were made, appropriate phones were lit up, and cardiologists reviewed and reassured, and Grandma can sleep tonight.

Basically, he's not a premie, but he's preterm. His heart wasn't entirely baked yet, and the first echo detected a hole between chambers that let some blood bypass the trip through the lungs for oxygen, so when he was off oxygen and active (or actively pissed, because he's sick of this) his oxygen level dropped a bit. That sounds really scary, and Dr. Google said it'd need surgery, because the name of the condition they put in the report is something really dire, OMG eleventy! And Google says it usually comes with a bunch of other scary heart things in a newborn, so everybody FREAK OUT!

And then nobody called his parents to discuss, so calls were made by Daddy who knows people, and stuff happened and it's now far less scary. The heart specialists they spoke to reviewed the two tests and were very reassuring, they said it'll either continue to close on its own in a few days (the first and second tests show it closing) or it'll need a low risk procedure to help close it. Barring another loop around the roller coaster, he might be sprung by next Wednesday, maybe?

So, in the span of 48 hours we went from he's doing fine and should come home in a day or two, to OMG, EVERYBODY PANIC RARE HEART DEFECT!! to doctors saying eh, it'll probably sort itself out shortly, if not it's an easy fix. 

It's like being strapped into a roller coaster with multiple inversions, but the ride appears to be slowing. 

Meanwhile, his big sister and her friends were concocting a plan to bust him out of the NICU. They're all very smart and athletic, so the hospital should be VERY AFRAID. They'll stand down for now, but yeah, a full on assault by the most athletic members of the junior honor society is still a possibility if they don't fix her brother and send him home next week.

I'm mentally wiped, and I'm just the grandma. His parents have been through the wringer. This has been like one of those multiple-inversion insane roller coasters, and I'm too fucking old for that shit.