Caden's Page

We have a praise report tonight. Caden has continued to improve little by little. The doctors and surgeons have scheduled Caden to have his chest sown back up tomorrow. Sherry and I visited Caden this evening after putting Riley to bed. Caden continues to improve ever so slowly. Since last night he has been completely removed from the epinephrine and his blood pressure remains steady. An echocardiogram was done today that showed improvement in Caden's heart functionality from yesterday. The doctors are planning to close up Caden's chest sometime tomorrow as long as Caden maintains his current condition. He will still have drain lines in his chest to remove fluid from around his heart. He will still be on the ventilator and several IVs. He is being kept fairly sedated, but he does open his eyes quite often when he hears Sherry or me.

One of Caden's little neighbors in the PCICU is not having as good of a day. This little girl's condition reinforces how much we have to be thankful for tonight. Her family is in so much pain. I reached out to her father tonight and told him that I had just got done praying for his little girl. Sherry and I held each other's hand while each of us took one of Caden's hands and we prayed. We thanked God for his answered prayers. We prayed for this little girl just lifted her and her family up to God. We asked God for continued improvements in Caden's condition. Please continue to pray Caden and his little neighbor. Also look around you and find something that you have to be thankful for tonight in addition to God answering our prayers for Caden. I am thankful for the support that I am getting from each and every one of you. You do not realize how many friends you have until you get into a situation like ours. Our family, pastors, close friends, small group members, my coworkers and managers, neighbors, other families who are going through this, and other people that we have never even met have been so warm and comforting.

THANK YOU AGAIN !!!

I just got off the phone with Caden's nurse. I am back home to get Sherry in bed. She has become completely exhausted over the past 36 hours. Sherry is doing well enough physically to be off of her pain medicine now for about 24 hours. Joe and Darla are staying near to Caden when Sherry and I take a break. I will be going back down for a little while tonight to check in on Caden.

Caden continues to make slow improvements. This is a very good sign at this point. He does still have an open chest with several drain lines as well as several ports to monitor pressures in specific places around his heart. He will probably stay this way for a couple more days until the fluid stops accumulating and the swelling starts to go down. The doctors have been slowly reducing the medicine that helps his heart to beat. They expect this progress to continue, but it will not be a fast process. He may be able to get completely off of one of the medicines by tomorrow.

A little history of the events from yesterday. They took Caden off to surgery at about 6:15AM. Caden went through the surgery with no major complications relative to open heart surgeries of this type. He was out of surgery shortly after lunch time. Later in the afternoon the doctors decided that Caden's blood pressure was dropping enough over a period of time to make them want to take a look with an echocardiogram. They found fluid building up around his heart and was not draining off via the system that was already in place. The doctors opened the incisions on his chest to relieve pressure from the heart and allow for them to remove the excess fluid. The blood pressure did not react as they had expected and they started more medicine to help the heart work harder to get the pressure back up. They did another echo later and found that there was still fluid building up. They investigated and found some non-blood fluids behind the heart. A drain line was placed in a way to allow that fluid to be removed and the heart started picking up steam. That was late last night (approx. midnight I think). Caden has been improving ever so slightly since then.

Please understand that we are getting your messages and have just not had a chance to return all of the calls. It is all Sherry can do right now to balance out taking care of Riley's need to see his Mommy and being there for Caden. She wants you all to know that she appreciates each and every one of you and will take calls and return them as time permits. Robin took calls for over three straight hours last night. There was a two hour stretch when she never heard the phone actually ring because a new call would come in over call waiting before she could get off another call. Robin, her daughter Andrea, and my nephew Kurt have been awesome the past two days taking care of Riley and your calls. Kurt was especially helpful when he realized he was talking to a telemarketer yesterday evening. Kurt asked the telemarketer, "Are you a telemarketer?" Their reply prompted him to say, "I thought you were somebody important." He was referring to our friends and family. That includes every person who has taken the time to visit this web site and read this story.

Thanks again. Don't forget to look at the new pictures. All of our love, Hank, Sherry, Riley, and Caden.

I wanted to take a quick moment to let everyone know how things are going. Caden is in critical but stable condition. The doctors tell us that the first 48 hours after this type of surgery is typically a roller coaster ride while the heart adapts to its new configuration. Caden still has his chest open to relieve pressure and allow for fluid to be drained off. He is not in pain. They have him in a medically induced coma.

Sherry, I, and Darla (Sherry's Mom) came home in the middle of the night to try to rest. My sister (Becke), my Mom (Priscilla), and Sherry's Dad (Joe) stayed at the hospital last night. Sherry, I, and her mom are headed back to the hospital in a few minutes.

I thank each and every one of you for your kind messages, thoughts, and especially your prayers. I want to give a special thanks to Adrian, Andrea, Darla, and Robin for stepping in and taking care of Riley and our home. One if them should be around the house if you do call there. Sherry and I will at the hospital if we are not resting. Sherry's Mom and Dad as well as my sister and my Mom are taking turns at the hospital with us.

A big thanks goes out to Rich and Julie Young, Eric and Karen Olyejar, David and Jeanette Bulick, Kane and Leslie Wright, and Pastor Sherry and the prayer warriors of Seacoast Church. You are all a wonderful moral and spiritual support that is vital to us right now.

We will get more information out as we are able to.

KEEP PRAYING!

All our love, Hank, Sherry, Riley and Caden

We met with the heart surgeon this afternoon about Caden. They have scheduled Caden for surgery on Monday morning at 7:30 AM. We will be at the hospital a little before 6:00 AM on Monday so we can see Caden before the surgery. We learned from the surgeon that Caden has a fairly unique anatomy relative to his heart and arteries. There have been echocardiograms and CT scans run on Caden in the past two days that provided information to the surgeons detailing Caden's anatomy. The results of these tests have told the surgeons that the surgery will be a little more complex than initially anticipated. The details are fairly technical and I won't try to explain. It would take pictures and some terms that I cannot even pronounce half of the time.

I have just made sure Sherry was tucked in for the night and I am on my way to visit Caden before I turn in for the night. Sherry is her own bed for the second night in a row. She was discharged yesterday evening. She is doing okay, but she is very sore from the C-section.

We just had the most awesome visit with Caden. He seems so peaceful and comfortable in his new home at the PCICU. Sherry got him to open his eyes as you will see form the pictures. I will warn you that the pictures are of Caden show him in his full ICU getup. Get the tissues ready before viewing the pictures if you are a softy like me. Caden had a good night and is doing good today. You will also see from the pictures that Sherry is looking good too. I will probably get to break her out of this place later today so that she can sleep in her own bed tonight. We will keep you posted.

Prayer Requests: We thank you for your prayers. We ask that you all continue to pray for Caden. Pray that God will heal his heart without surgeons needing to touch him. Pray for God to guide the hands of all those who do touch Caden in the next few days and weeks. Thank God for the protection and comfort that he has given Caden. Pray that God will keep Sherry, me, and our family strong and faithful. Pray that God will heal Sherry and give her physical comfort to be able to travel back and forth to see Caden. Thank God for the blessings that he has delivered to us through gifts, services, and words of encouragement from so many different people.

We are on our way over to PCICU to see Caden now. We will get back to you with more information later.

Caden had an apnea spell while I held him Tues. night so he was put back on the breathing machine. The medicine which keeps his heart working till surgery has a side effect of apnea (stopping his breathing). This side effect will go away right after surgery when the medicine is stopped. They will keep him on the breathing machine till after the surgery. Caden had a blood transfusion Wed. night due to low hemoglobin levels. He does not have a high enough oxygen level in his blood due to effects associated with his heart defect plus the longer he's here the more blood that gets drawn for tests. His body just can't reproduce the blood as fast as they draw it out. Other transfusions are possible in the future.He has 3 separate IV's and a line in his belly button each for a different purpose. They are running out of places to stick! Caden is a trooper. He shows a lot of facial expressions like his brother and can already lift one eyebrow like his daddy. He often responds by opening his eyes when he hears our voice.Oh, almost forgot. We finally know how long he is...19inches!Thank you all for your continuous prayers.

At this moment Sherry is resting and I have just returned from the PCICU. Caden has settled into his new area without incident. We were told earlier this evening that the surgery will not happen until early next week. We should have more definite scheduling information from the pediatric cardiologist later today.

I forgot to mention how great of a time Riley and I had today. We played in the MUSC Children's Hospital Atrium. It is a really cool place for the patients and family of those here at the Children's Hospital. Riley is not allowed to see his baby brother but he can visit Mom. He and I played and then had lunch while Sherry and her Mom visited with Caden today.

Sherry and I just got back from the NICU. We have been told that Caden is being relocated to the PCICU tonight. This is the ICU that focuses on pediatric heart patients. They have been at 100% capacity since Caden was born and now one of their eight beds is open. This will mean that Caden is one step closer to his surgery. We have been told that Caden could get his surgery as early as tomorrow morning. We are not going to count on that just yet because it is Thursday evening and I would have expected to have signed a consent form by now if the surgery was actually going to happen tomorrow. We will just have to wait and see. Stay tuned for more information. I will try to keep this site a little more current.

Well, It has been an eventful two days to say the least. I won't bore you with the nasty details. The bottom line is that Caden is doing great on the NICU grading scale. He has passed all test so far related to the 22q11.2 deletion. For those of you who are not aware, there was a test two weeks ago that displayed a possible chromosome abnormality. God is showing these doctors up here who is really in charge. Caden is passing one test after another with flying colors and the doctors here at MUSC are starting to doubt whether they can actually classify Caden as having full blown Di George syndrome. At this point, he is not showing any other markers than the heart defect which we have known about since July.

Sherry is doing pretty good. She is up and walking around several times per day and eating normal meals now. She expects to be discharged from the hospital tomorrow or Saturday.

ME?...I am standing with faith that God will see us through. Sherry continues to remind me, "This too shall pass." I don't know where it originated, but Anne Marie Ezzo has said it a couple of times in our parenting videos.

Caden Gabriel Osborne was born this morning at 9:17AM. He weighed 5 lbs 14 oz at birth. Caden is doing fine. He had some assistance with breathing for a while today, but he's off the breathing machine now. Initial results from tests that have been run on Caden have given us no surprises. He is still looking at open-heart surgery in a few days to a week.

Sherry is doing great and recovering well. She is supposed to be able to hold Caden for the first time this evening. More pictures to follow. HO