prayers needed

We just got back from the hospital. Unfortunately, we weren't able to visit with Pierce as another baby was undergoing surgery in the NICU (they shut the NICU down whenever there is a surgery). We did however, learn that Pierce's latest brain scan shows significant growth in his ventricles, which means that fluid is indeed building up. This is very disheartening as the last scan indicated that there was no swelling. The Dr's are a little perplexed as to why it took Pierce's brain so long to swell (typically the swelling occurs almost immediately). While we knew this was a potential risk, we didn't expect such a significant growth in such a short time, especially after such positive results last week. Please pray for us as we deal with this news. The plan for treatment will be to perform a series of spinal taps to hopefully draw off some of the spinal fluid and relieve some of the pressure in the brain. If this fails, the next step will be to call in the pediatric neurosurgeon and begin discussing placement of a temporary shunt (Pierce is too small for a full VP shunt). As you can imagine, this is all very scary for us. Please, please pray that God works and heals our son. Pray as the nurse practitioner, Tony does the spinal tap today. Our prayer is that Tony will be able to drain off a significant amount of spinal fluid to buy us some time before a shunt will need to be placed (that would allow for Pierce to grow stronger and bigger before undergoing another surgery). Pray also that Pierce tolerates the procedure well. Many of the preemies do not tolerate the positioning (curled up in a side-laying position)for this procedure, so our hope is that Pierce will. We will update you soon after we know the results of the spinal tap, which should be later on today.

Much love,
Lindsay, Nik and Pierce