Little Thor

I've been trying to figure out how to write this post for almost a week now and I still have no idea where to begin. I'm going to leave out LOTS of details because so much has happened in the last 5 days, but I want to at least get caught up.

First of all, Thor is a BOY! When the ultrasound tech told us, I said, "Little brothers!" and thought of Zach and Josh as little boys. We are excited. Zach was grinning ear to ear. It's going to be "Kate and the Boys" for awhile now!

But then...

We found out last Friday that Thor has a large mass in his right lung. It is pretty much taking up the whole lung. It is technically a tumor but it's not at all cancer related. It's called a CCAM and developed totally randomly--it's not caused by genes or environment, nor is it connected to any other birth defects or chromosomal abnormalities, which is good. What is not good is that it is difficult to see how much, if any, healthy lung tissue Thor has on his right side.

When we first found out, I spent an evening, night, and morning thinking that they were going to tell us that he had zero chance of survival. That was a bad night. But I was wrong.

The good news is that most of the time the baby begins to grow faster than the CCAM and that they can wait to take it out (surgically) until after he's born. Still major surgery, but with good success rates and seemingly little to no long term effects. Praise God. Lung tissue can grow until the child is 8 or 9 and compensate for empty space in the chest.

The scary part is that if the mass continues to grow, it could put too much pressure on his little heart, causing it to either develop incorrectly or to fail completely. If that is the case, we would have to do in utero surgery--yes, that means cutting me open, cutting him open, removing the mass, and then closing everything back up again. The best statistic I saw online was the survival rate of babies who undergo this procedure was 78%. Not high enough to qualm my fears. The other scary part is that cutting into a woman's uterus often causes early labor, and depending on how far along the pregnancy is, premies can end up with a huge list of problems. They do not do the fetal surgery in Chicago. We would have to travel to Cincinnati or Philedelphia.

Fortunately, when our high-risk OB doc, Dr. Ouyang, talked to the specialist in Cincinnati about our case, he estimated that we would have a less than 5% chance of needing any kind of fetal intervention. Hallelujah! That made me feel so much better.

We are now in the process of trying to schedule a quick trip to Cincinnati to have a consultation. We would get lots of tests and lots of information. We're just waiting to hear if insurance will cover it. Looks like it will.

For the rest of the pregnancy I have to have two ultrasound per week to make sure that they baby is not developing heart failure and to measure the size of the CCAM. We are also probably going to start a round of steroids that might slow the growth of the tumor.

We are of course, completely overwhelmed. It has been an emotionally exhausting week and one where we have little reserves for things like homework, Isaac getting sick, and now me getting sick. We have gone through lots of feelings toward God and the situation.

This morning was kind of the straw that broke the Momma's back. I started feeling really yucky last night and this nasty cold hasn't let up since. Zach left for work and Izey made a big stink in his diaper. I was getting ready to change him but apparently the smell sent me over the edge. I had to run to the bathroom to puke while Isaac stood behind me, hitting my back and whining. Is that a pathetic picture, or what?

So I called Zach, and he came home to my rescue. He's starting to feel sick, too, so then we called his mom and said, "We need a mom to swoop in and rescue all of us!" So she's on her way here.

Those of you who got emails and phone calls from us already, thank you for your support. We know little Thor is well covered in prayer. We'll keep you updated, of course.