Surgery has been cancelled...

...and we couldn't be more thrilled. Let me catch everyone up on how the weekend went. 

Sutton's bronch on Friday showed a surprisingly patent airway. There was an area of exposed cartilage that was found on the left side of his trachea. This is most likely from the mass pushing from the right and causing the ETT to rub and wear down some of the tissue. Since it was late Friday, the ENT opted to replace his ETT with a smaller size, order some steroids through the night to reduce the airway inflammation, and try to extubate him (again) on Saturday. This was all in an effort to allow the exposed area to heal and hopefully prevent scar tissue (which doesn't expand well and could need surgical intervention down the road) from forming and further complicating his airway issue. 

Kedric and I had a lot of reservations about this because of how poorly the previous extubation had gone, not to mention we have seen the displacement of his trachea on the scans and didn't have high hopes for it working out very well. 

It's Monday now and Sutton remains extubated! He is getting oxygen with pressure support, but we will begin weaning that down as well. 

When Kedric and I arrived this morning, Sutton's ENT physicians, nurse, attending, and resident were all at his bedside. We assumed it was because they had other cases move quickly and would be taking him early for his 12:50 surgery. We looked at the images from his bronch and the ENTs explained that they have seen babies get by with more restrictive airways and they have been extremely surprised by the results of his bronch and thrilled with the success of his extubation. They had discussed several options prior to our arrival and felt that foregoing surgery at this time would be Sutton's best option.  

The logic behind this is that 1) he will have to be reintubated for surgery and for a brief time after and this would cause further irritation to his airway and 2) he is breathing just fine without having surgery. Kedric and I agreed, and surgery for today has been cancelled. They have increased the volume of his feeds and began reducing the pressure support on his oxygen. Ideally, he will keep trending in this direction and we may be able to take surgery of the table indefinitely. What we need now is weight gain. The bigger he grows, the less these cysts will impact his airway (assuming they grow minimally or at least at a slower rate than he does). We may be able to sustain with sclerotherapy.  

This weekend and today have been so promising that its hard not to rest all of our hopes on no surgery, no trach, breastfeeding soon (which is a very real possibility!!), and GOING HOME. But we are trying to remain realistic as things are always changing. So we'll take this one day at a time. We are SO thankful that our baby has been prayed for by so many and watched over by one - we may not have had such wonderful news today if this hadn't been the case. 

We ask for your continued prayers as we move moment by moment. We look forward to being home as soon as possible and now, hopefully, sooner than we had thought. 

Here are some cute closing pics :)