Jack Jensen's Blog: A long message and lots of photos

Monday, May 12, 2008

A long message and lots of photos

I've been slacking a bit on posting and uploading photos. Jack, James and I had a great time this past weekend in CT and NY. It was my dad's birthday on Friday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!) so we spent time in CT then we all drove to the farm in the Catskills. The whole Wahl family was there and we had such a great time. Jack was entertaining us all on Saturday night. He's such a monkey man! I'll post some videos later. I love when he can spend time with family and get to know them. He gets so excited to see his Auntie Cathy, Uncles Chris, George & Great-Uncle Len. His new routine is to slap you on both sides of the face and kick like crazy when he's excited to see you. James parents are going to visit over Memorial Weekend so Jack will get to bond more with them too.

Mother's Day was just great. My brother George made us all a huge breakfast and we all spent some time outside by the pond and hanging out. My truck got a flat so that took a while to change and we got a late start heading back to MD but I'm secretly glad because we spent more time with family. I was thinking back to last year at this time. I remember last Mother's Day I was really stressed out because I had no idea what this year would bring - whether or not it would be a happy day for me. I could never have imagined that Jack would have pulled through everything and made such an amazing recovery. On top of all that he's the cutest little baby with the most amazing temperment. He's always making me laugh and brings clarity and perspective to our lives. We are so blessed and I still can't believe I was chosen to be his mother. I feel like I hit the lottery and I'm waiting to wake up from the most amazing dream. I spent a lot of the day thinking about other moms...the ones sitting in the NICUs, PICUs and The Children's House at Johns Hopkins. I think that next year I want to make some food/desserts to bring to Hopkins for those moms.

Anyway, I hope all the moms out there had a great day! Here are some photos that I have been meaning to post. Oh - I almost forgot....Jill Myers (see link under photographers) came to visit our family on April 27th. She took more photos of Jack. They came out so great! I am always amazed at the beauty of her photos and how she totally captures the emotions. I didn't post the photos earlier because I had some of them printed and framed for my dad for his birthday. He loved them Jill!

Love
Vic

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

1 comment:

Fer said...: Hi Vicki, thanks for posting on my blog, you'r e always welcome to visit :) I'll email you later.

I'm glad you had such a wonderful time in Catskills. I have a very close friend of mine who lives there.

Tha photos of Jack are awesome, he's such a cutie!; May 13, 2008 at 10:21 AM

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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.