We received some bad news when we went to the hospital to see our son today. The attending physician in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit informed us that a sonogram of our son’s head revealed that he had suffered a grade III intraventricular hemorrhage.  The way the doctor explained it to us was that there was some intraventricular bleeding which has since clotted, but is now forming a blockage preventing the proper flow of cerebrospinal fluid. They seemed to indicate there was no reason for immediate worry, but they are going to keep an eye on it. Lucas will now receive weekly sonograms. The hope is that his body will naturally reabsorb the clots and things will go back to normal. The doctor gave us a 50/50 chance of that happening. If the clots are not naturally reabsorbed, then the doctors will have to consider a more invasive approach.

There are a lot of potential outcomes to this situation, and right now we are simply hoping for the best, and we are not trying not to focus on the negative possibilities. But this is one more complication, and it is a very hard one to bear. The good news is that so long as there are no further complications, Lucas may still be able to leave the NICU in about 4 weeks. But in the mean time Nora and I are just trying to support each other through this rough patch. I will post more updates as they occur…

Everyone’s support and concern is deeply appreciated.

You can contribute to the Lucas Emergency Fund

Please feel free to comment below.

This is the next in my series discussing my experiences in the military Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES). This is specifically regarding the role of the Veterans Administration.

If you are referred to a Physical Evaluation Board (PEB), your package will first be sent to D.C. for a review by your service component. In the case of the Navy / Marine Corps your package will be reviewed at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. by two line officers, typically one Marine and one Navy, and by one medical corps officer (Navy). These are usually all paygrade o6 (Captain or Colonel).

Their findings will be reviewed by a Staff Judge Advocate to ensure their findings are within the boundaries of the established regulations. From there your package will be sent to the Veterans Administration, who will actually make a determination of disability percentages. When the package is sent from the PEB to the VA, your status on your PEBLO’s tracker will change to “Sent for review”. This can be confusing, because this is the same status that they will have when it is en route to you as well.

There are only two VA offices to handle the review of these cases for all branches of the service, which means they are swamped. One of those offices only handles Army cases, meaning all other cases (and some Army) are sent to the other office for review. When my package was finally sent to the VA for review, I was told I could expect my results in about eight weeks. That was about twenty-eight weeks ago. So the real lesson to keep in mind is that you are in for a long, stressful wait.

During this time you will remain in a LIMDU status, although your accounting code will change from 105 (LIMDU) to 355 (Awaiting PEB), which will have little meaning to you, but impacts how you can be assigned at your command. I will write more on that in a future post.

If you have questions, please feel free to ask, I don’t know all the answers, but I will try to get the answer or steer you in the right direction.

At 0400 on Monday the 23rd of January my wife asked me to take her to the hospital because she had the worst headache of her life. She was pregnant and the doctor had warned us about this… So I drove her to the Naval Hospital at Jacksonville Naval Air Station where she was diagnosed with severe pre-eclampsia and sent via ambulance to the University of Florida Shands Hospital, down town. It turns out that the Naval Hospital cannot deliver a baby prior to 36 weeks, and Lucas was 32 weeks and 6 days. But it was made clear to us that the only cure for my wife’s condition was to get the baby out.

She spent the rest of the day on Magnesium Sulfate to get her blood pressure down and some other supplements to help her out, and they collected 24 hours worth of urine. On Tuesday they induced labor and after 46 hours in labor my wife gave birth to our beautiful son, Lucas.

Because he was born 7 weeks premature, he had to be immediately admitted into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). My wife also wound up spending the rest of the week in the hospital. She is home now, but my son is still in the NICU. We visit him several times a day daily. We spend as much time as possible with him, but it’s been a real emotional roller coaster. He’s making good progress, but there is no indication of when they may let him come home. In the mean time I am worried sick.

He’s had his ups and downs, and has been doing well over all. Today they had to move him into isolation because he tested positive for MRSA, which scares me to death. You hear so many horror stories. So in the mean time my wife and I try to take it one day at a time, and just hope for the best. I am just not sure what else we can do. I just want him to be healthy, and to come home…

I am going to put together a page just to follow the trials of my little man-cub. I have also started an emergency fund for him which seems prudent, given the fact that he is premature, and is having so many struggles… I want to be as prepared as possible for every contingency when he comes home. If anyone would like to contribute to the fund you can do so here. I set the fund up with SmartyPig, so it is safe and easy for those who may want to help. In the mean time I will try to post updates as much as possible.

Thanks to everyone for all the support!