Some good news...some bad news...

Let's start with some good news.

We know Rhys was born premature, however, he is looking very good and stable. His red-blood count looks good, he is breathing on his own and alert.

Ok, now the bad news.

Rhys has a problem that affects even full-term babies which is called a Tracheo Esophageal Fistula (TEF or TE Fistula for short). Simply this is a communication between the trachea and esophagus. Basically his esophagus is connecting to his trachea which it should not be. We are not 100% sure at the moment what type it is but based on x-rays the doctors and surgens think it looks like this:



As you can see his esophagus is not connected and from his stomach it is attached to his treacha. Basically this prevents him from eating or swallowing. Apparently this develops somewhere between 4-6 weeks as an embryo. Another interesting fact is that this affects about 1 in every 1000-2000 births. Since there are about 11,000 births per-day in the United States about 2-9 percent of all children each day are born with this.

With technology today the survival rate of this from surgery can be as high as 100%!!! However, one thing to note is about 17-70% of cases of TEF are associated with other problems.

Now it's time to pray and be with our son as much as possible!