Re-Tooling TBL

For several years TBL was a blog where I wrote about a wide variety of topics. Those postings are still in the Blog Archive and many are about professional development for engineers. I am now transitioning TBL to be a place where my current and former students can find information related to job searches.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Grandparenthood Takes a Down Turn

As some of you may know and others are probably just learning, my grandson Ethan is hospitalized in a pediatric intensive care unit with a blood clot in his aorta.

Ethan was born on December 21st and was a happy healthy big boy (9lbs 15 oz). We enjoyed one week of cuddling and snuggling before coming back to GR on December 28th. On December 31st Ethan was dehydrated and having circulation issues. He was admitted to the Oklahoma University Medical Center for Children on January 1st and has been there ever since.

The clot has caused significant issues as you can imagine, though Ethan has responded well to all medications and he is staying strong. The issue is simply that there is a clot blocking 90% of flow in the 1 cm diameter aorta and the clot is one inch long. The plan has been to administer clot reducing drugs. If that doesn't work, a heart surgery will be performed to remove it.

Angie is in Oklahoma, she flew down on January 1st and will be there through at least this Saturday. Colin's parent are also there (Dad is a pastor - he has already baptized Ethan and Mom is a cardiac physiologist professor).

It is very hard to have something like this happen to someone so young and so special to my heart, but the pain compounds as I watch my daughter and son-in-law have to struggle through the scariest of experiences as young parents.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I am very sorry to hear about your grandson Ron! You, your family, and your grandson are in my prayers! Keep us up to date please.

Malarie

Anonymous said...

I love you, daddy.