This website is here for everyone to follow Logan's medical journey and to keep everyone updated on his progress. We appreciate all the love and support that we are receiving from all of our friends and family.
On Wednesday, August 24th Berlin took Logan in for his routine 2 month check up with his pediatrician. At the doctors Berlin mentioned to the doctor that his eyes still had a tint on yellow in them (Logan was born with Jaundice so we thought it was just taking a while to go away). The doctor was a little concerned and ordered him to have blood work done. Everything else checked out fine with him. He's just over 12 lbs (gaining weight as he should), starting to smile, very active, and is very aware of what's going on around him.
Later Wednesday evening I (Brandon) got a call from the pediatrician and they said the lab work came back and it was abnormal and they were really concerned about the level of bilirubin that was showing in the results. They suggested that I take him into Children's Hospital Los Angeles immediately. At the time I was at the gym and Berlin was at work so we both dropped what we were doing and picked Logan up from my parents and brought him in right away.
We were admitted through the emergency room and again they ran more blood work and results were the same (high level of bilirubin). They ordered for him to have an ultrasound and in the ultrasound they noticed his gallbladder was unusually small and it was hard for them to make out his Bile ducts that connect the liver to the gallbladder. Because Logan had just eaten a few hours before the ultrasound they thought that might have been the reason his gallbladder look so small. They wanted us to hold off from feeding him until they were able to do another ultrasound on him.
Early Thursday morning (around 1am) they brought us up into the pediatric wing since it was looking like we were going to be here for a while. They put him on an IV to give him fluids and nutrients since he wasn't going to be able to eat. Around 11am is when they FINALLY did the second ultra sound on him. After getting back to our room from the ultra sound there was a team of Liver specialist that came in to talk to us. They let us know that what they were seeing in all the test results was very concerning to them and they believe what he has is whats called "Biliary Atresia" which is a very rare liver disease that occurs occurs about 1 in 18,000 babies born. (I will include a link that talks about this disease). The doctors were very informative and told us what could happen, what we want to happen, different test they want to run, etc.
Fast forward to Friday, August 26th. Dr. Kasper Wang came into our room and talked to us about everything that is going on. He informed us that he is the lead surgeon at Children's Hospital and that he has dealt with many cases of Biliary Atresia. He broke it down for us as follows; when a child is born with Biliary Atresia the sooner it is diagnosed the better because what's happening is the bile that is in his liver is not being filtered out and causing the liver to slowly be damaged, Logan is at the age where if we were to have waited any longer it would have been a lot more serious. Instead of running more test the doctor suggested that they move forward with taking him into the operating room, inserting a small camera through his belly button to look at his liver and gallbladder. Through the camera he should be able to tell right away if he has Biliary Atresia, if he cannot confirm through the camera they will do a biopsy on his liver and take a small sample of his liver to look under a microscope and that will confirm if he has Biliary Atresia 100%. If he does have Biliary Atresia they will operate on him immediately and perform whats called a Kasai procedure (I will include a link that explains that procedure).
As of today (March, 3, 2017) Logan has had a Kasai procedure back in August, the procedure was unsuccessful and Logan was put onto the liver transplant list around late January. Vanessa (Logan's auntie) was a match to be a donor and on Valentine's Day (February 14, 2017) Logan had a liver transplant. Please refer to all the journal updates to get a more detailed explanation on our day to day adventure!
