Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Benjamin is Jaundiced

Yesterday afternoon I started noticing that the whites of Ben's eyes weren't so white. So I changed his appointment with the pediatrician from Thursday to today. His total bilirubin is 15.9, but the direct (bad!) bilirubin is only 0.4. SO, this is just a case of normal infant jaundice. Of course, any yellowing of his skin and eyes is enough to scare me. The pediatrician was so nice about it, and said that if it weren't for Anthony's history, he probably wouldn't even check the level of bilirubin in Ben's blood.

BUT, because he did, and because 15.9 is at the upper limits of "acceptable" for infant jaundice, we're going to re-check his bilirubin level tomorrow morning. If the level has gone down, we're going to let this run it's course. If it has gone up, then Ben will need phototherapy to help get rid of the bilirubin.

I'll update again tomorrow with the results of Ben's bilirubin test. Anthony has labs tomorrow, too, so this should be interesting!!

2 comments:

Stacy said...

Yikes - I just read this! 9:40 might be a bit late to call, though. Shoot me an e-mail after labs tomorrow...geez, why does that sound familiar?

Love ya!

Lacey said...

Eek...update, update, update when you find out things. Love you!