Jack Jensen's Blog: Catskill, NY Trip

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Catskill, NY Trip

James, Jack and I just got back from a great trip to Catskill, NY. My parents have property and a house there. We tell Jack it's "The Farm". He has such a great time there between seeing family, going on nature walks, watching James catch him frogs and breathing all that fresh air. This trip marked a major transition for us. James is now off from work for the summer and will take care of Jack and as of tomorrow I'm back in the lab full time. I have mixed feelings about going back to work. On the one hand I'm really excited to get my scientific mojo back and get back to doing cool experiments and having stimulating conversation. I tried to read Jack some Ebola papers one day but he was more interested in crinkling the papers! Anyway, it'll be awesome to be back in lab and see my friends but at the same time it will be VERY hard to be away from Jack. The only consolation is that I know that he'll be in excellent hands with James and it's their turn to bond and do "guy stuff". Our trip to NY was great because we spent the whole time with family, hanging out and eating good food (I ate WAY TOO MUCH NY pizza!).

James had a great first Father's Day. My dad was excited too because he had all 3 of his kids there and his grandson. Of course my uncle Len was also there being his normal fun/crazy self. Yesterday my Uncle Len was helping Jack get in touch with his Italian roots. He was singing him "Eh Cumpari" and in the video you can see that Jack starts clapping along. It was hysterical to watch! My Uncle Len used to sing to me when I was little so it was so cool to see the tradition passing on to another generation.

I also put some photos after the video. They are photos from the past week or so.

Vic

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: That video is so cute! I can decide who's cuter... Uncle Len or Jack. Have a great first day back at work!; June 23, 2008 at 8:37 AM
Fer said...: I LOVED the video Vic!, thanks for the smile on my face. Jack is so cute! I can tell he really enjoyed his uncle's singing!. One of my best friends lives in Catskill and I've been there, it's beautiful, full of trees!...

I was wondering what's the name of the song Len is singing so I can download it from the web. I used to talk italian and I think it'd be wonderful if I could sing that song to juan Pablo.

Wonderful photos at the end :)

And have a nice day back to work.; June 23, 2008 at 12:15 PM

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Jack's Diagnosis and Recovery

At our 19 week ultrasound Jack was diagnosed with CDH. One week later James and I went to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. for more extensive analysis. We had a fetal MRI and saw that his hernia was on the left side (the most common) and at that time his liver was 'up' or in his chest. His heart was pushed to the right in his chest and he had a normal sized right lung and a very small left lung (about 1/5 the normal size). Overall his CDH was classified as severe with a Lung to Head (LHR) ratio of 0.8. His echocardiogram showed that his heart was beating strong and there was no underlying congenital heart defect. His amnio was also normal. The prognosis was 20-50% chance of survival at birth. The struggle we faced with this diagnosis was that there is little correlation between prenatal diagnostic test results and outcome at birth. Some babies with mild defects do poorly and some with severe defects pull through and do very well. All we could do was try to be optimistic and hope and pray that Jack would be a strong baby and fight hard. On August 20, 2007 John Verner Jensen "Jack" was born by C-section at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces and was 20 inches long. Within hours of birth he was placed on ECMO (heart-lung bypass). He had a 10 day run on ECMO and went to his hernia repair surgery on this machine. He was missing 90% of his left diaphragm, had his entire stomach, spleen, and parts of his small and large intestines and liver in his chest and he required a gortex patch. Jack came out of surgery off ECMO but with the cannulas still in place until later that night. He had a really hard night after surgery and we nearly lost him. We were later told his blood gases should have been unsurvivable and that it was pure will and not medicine that saved him. After 81 days in hospital we brought Jack home breathing room air and needing only an NG (naso-gastric) feeding tube. After 27 days home he reherniated and we had to go back for emergency surgery at Johns Hopkins. His awesome surgeons literally patched him back up and after another 16 days in hospital he returned home on Dec 21, 2007 - just in time for his first Christmas. Since then Jack has tackled his eating issues and is NG-tube free! He does not require any medication. We are extremely grateful for his incredible medical team and all his friends and family for their support, kind words, thoughts and prayers.

Jack's CarePage chronicles his day-to-day journey from diagnosis to approximately 6 months old (before we started blogging). See the link below.