You’re sitting there probably thinking that this post is going to be about how George passed a fasting challenge and we were discharged. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s not. On day of life 32, George’s face swelled up and I felt his forehead was getting extremely warm. We had a nurse confirm his temperature and it was higher than normal. I initially started to panic because I just had a feeling this was an infection. They took some blood and started him on tylenol, as well as antibiotics. I had a major breakdown this day and I vividly remember a nurse that Rich and I weren’t very fond of came up to me and just hugged me. She whispered in my ear to reassure me everything would be okay. I took all the comfort I could get at this point and Rich caught this moment. After the nurse walked off, he took me to one side and we went to the stairwell. This is where we would go to have our meltdowns or sad moments. We talked about how played with we felt. Also, how our perceptions of that one nurse had completely changed.

Let me point out, that the inflammation that George had caught EVERYONE off guard. No one could explain it and not one doctor had ever seen this happen in the NICU.  A few days later, ears, nose, and throat (ENT) came to check on George. They wanted to make sure that he wouldn’t need a minor surgery to release the fluid from his glands. We were massaging his cheeks and actually draining his glands. At the end of it all, George continued on antibiotics and his parotiditis went away. Towards the end of the infection, an ENT doctor came to talk to us and check in on George. He explained to us that this infection is actually quite common in older patients and tends to happen when the salivary glands aren’t being used. So when George experienced pulmonary hypertension, he was also on a feeding tube along with the CPAP because they didn’t want him working too hard to feed. The doctor also mentioned that he had only seen this once before in a neonate in his 13 years of being a doctor. TYPICAL GEORGE!!