The Eastberg Family

Hello all, as many of you know the Eastberg family is going through something no family should have to go through! Although money might not be their main priority, it is also not something they should have to stress about right now! Unfortunately bills don’t stop no matter what you have going on in life! Bret and Jordyn work their butt off with the company they own, and right now Slade needs them more than anything! The Eastberg family has a TRIBE behind them!! They would do absolutely anything for anyone! But would never ask anyone for a thing! Please continue to pray for this family, for the DR’s and the most important for Slade! We will continue to post the updates on that sweet boy as they come!

Slade Strong!

Two years ago - we were excited to welcome our 3rd baby boy into this world. We had no idea of the journey we were on when he was born. Shortly after birth, we found out that Slade had many physical anomalies, none of which were discovered in utero. Little did we know that 2 years later, he would be fighting for his life for the second time, and this time it would be because of complications from a "routine" surgery.

Slade was born with something called VACTERL. He has some vertebrae anomalies, an extra rib on one side, some fused ribs, various heart defects that were life threatening. He also had something called TEF - a condition where the esophagus was not connected to the stomach, also a life threatening condition. He had his first surgery at 2 days old to connect the esophagus to the stomach and then had open heart surgery at 3 weeks old to do a temporary repair for his heart. Slade was born at our local hospital and had to be transported just hours after birth by ambulance instead of air transport (due to snow) to a Children's Hospital about an hour and a half away. He spent 8 weeks at Children's Hospital before being able to go home for the very first time. It was wildly unexpected. He came home on a feeding tube and needed 5 therapies a week to support him and his diagnosis.

The first 2 years of Slade's life were far from easy for our family. Jordyn had to quit her job, to care for Slade full time. We had thought things had finally settled into a pretty new "normal" and we finally got to enjoy some normalcy during the last 6 months. However, there was always one thing that never really seemed to be fixed - his esophagus and feeding issues. He has needed several dilations for his esophagus as it frequently narrows at the connections site. On 4/19 - Slade had a scheduled esophageal dilation after noticing symptoms (again) of narrowing. He was the last case of the day. He had surgery around 5pm, we went home around 9pm. He was finally able to eat and drink some stuff by mouth again! Overnight, things quickly changed. He started saying his stomach hurt, then a few hours later his breathing changed and became severely labored. We called on the oncall GI doctor to see what we should do. At first, we wanted to get him back to Children's but it was apparent he would not make it that far and needed to go to our local ER. Our house was only 20 minutes away. 10 minutes into the drive, I knew he needed an ambulance NOW. The ambulance took us the rest of the way to the local ER where he was immediately intubated. Our local ER spent hours trying to stabilize him enough for him to be able to be taken by helicopter to Children's Hospital. He had been bagged numerous times prior to being put on a ventilator and needed chest tubes plast through his sides. We didn't know exactly what was wrong but we had a suspicion that he was suffering from a perforated esophagus from surgery the day before.

Once at Children's Hospital he underwent several emergency surgeries to further stabilize him. The ambulance ride on 4/20 was the last time I held him. That morning was the last time we heard his voice. He has been in the PICU for 12 days now, fighting for his life. Children's confirmed what we feared most - the surgeon had perforated his esophagus. This is a risk to these procedures - it only happens in 1-2% of cases. The nightmare got worse as Slade was in septic shock. Turns out, Slade had Strep A. Strep is fine when it remains in the throat. But due to the perforation, it had left his throat and entered his chest cavity putting him in sepsis and had entered his tissues.

During the last 12 days - Slade has had multiple surgeries, collapsed lungs, has been on dialysis and has experienced multiple organ failure. He is still on a ventilator and very, very, sick. We have weeks left here in the ICU where he needs 1:1 care with a nurse 24 hours a day. The last 12 days have been every parent's worst nightmare - wondering if we would ever get to bring our child home and if his body could be strong enough to fight such severe infection while his body was trying to heal.

We do not know what exactly the future looks like. He is looking at a 6-12 month recovery for his esophagus. He is back to being 100% dependent on tube feeds. He has 2 brothers at home who miss him. Parents whose hearts are completely shattered. Family and friends who are heartbroken. Our journey is going to be long - but we know Slade is a fighter. And we won't stop fighting and praying for our sweet boy until he is safe at home. We need prayers, well wishes and all positive things that Slade recovers but also that he may be able to get some sort of his life back the way it was - before all of this happened. Our lives are drastically changed again because of this and we just pray for the best outcome possible. Follow our journey through the unexpected, tumultuous time in our life as we fight alongside our Slade.

#sladestrong

Update from momma Eastberg

Update: 8:30am 4/26

Good Morning ☀️

The older boys came to see their brother last night at the hospital for the first time ever. They brought cards their classmates made and hung them in his room. My heart needed that

I apologize we didn’t post an update last night - sometimes it’s very hard to muster up the right words. I’ll start with the positive things first and then get to the serious news that came late last night.

In short - surgery went very well yesterday. They cleaned out the right side, added some new drainage points and were able to trade the stent for a wound vac in his esophagus (which is really cool - his GI doctor has a doctor friend from Bostons Childrens Hosp. who designed it and it’s been used on 5 adults so far with great success). From a surgery standpoint - it went as good as we could have hoped for. His inflammation markers are improving. He was holding his own.

Yesterday prior to surgery his attending Doc (who we couldn’t love more) told me ”the win for today is that he’s not worse. He’s not better - but not worse”.

That left me feeling very optimistic. Sometimes - just knowing things aren’t any worse is a huge relief here in the ICU.

But as you probably have noticed by now - things are very minute by minute right now. Not even so much day by day.

Infectious disease stayed late yesterday to talk to us. They finally got something to grow and show up in the lab from the fluid they had initially pulled from around his lung area when he first got here. The bacteria that is growing is strep-A. Both older boys and I had strep about a week before slades dilation. The caveat is that you can have this strep in your throat and be totally asymptomatic, and be totally fine as long as it stays there. The problem is that when they perforated his esophagus, that strep bacteria that was found in his throat leaked out into his chest cavity. when strep leaks out of the place that it’s supposed to be in - into the places that it shouldn’t be, it leaks into your tissues and starts to attack them. They now know that it is the specific bacteria that is necrotizing his tissues on the inside. Strep is no longer just in his bloodstream. It has to be extremely aggressively treated because it’s reached the tissues and it’s at other places in the body now. They’ve cleaned out all of the necrotized tissue that they could so far during the wash out surgeries but it is very very likely that as it continues to spread, it will reach other tissues that will then also have to be washed out. Right now - the goal is to prevent it from necrotizing the tissues surrounding his vital organs and going into his bone.

When they told me, I cried with tears rolling down my face. My heart felt like it could have stopped. The severity of this infection - which we KNEW was so serious - is much scarier now that it’s known. Why? They described it such as this - when you have an infection on your leg like an abscess, they can see it and treat it. This infection can’t be seen unless your inside his body. therefore - SO much harder to treat. especially since slade is not healthy enough to just ”go in and look”. They have to watch all of his labs closely to determine when they go back in for a washout. He is on the strongest antibiotics he can be on and they are watching him closely.

He’s been battling fevers and then it drops - fighting low body temps (think 94 degrees low).

Sandwiched with some other good news - his kidney numbers look better. Maybe today we can get some news we can avoid dialysis (I’m not sure if I mentioned he may need that and today is the big day to decide).

My heart is shattered. We are scared. We are sad. We are asking God why? How?

Slade is a fighter. He doesn’t know any different. He’s got his mamas fight and his dads EFF YOU attitude. He’s a strong kid. And I’ll be damned if we don’t do every single thing known to man to help Slade fight this.

I don’t know what today will bring - I will try to do an update tonight. I am praying nearly every moment for a good day with a sign of drastic turn around in the right direction.

Please keep praying - as we know you all are. Thank you - for every single one of them. #sladestrong

Update from Slades momma

Update: 7:30pm 4/24

It’s been a long 24ish hours since our last update.

Yesterday afternoon slade went for an esophagram- where he declined to a very imminent critical status during the procedure. This, with his fever and heart rate as well as with his labs - let us know he was not better but much worse. This led to an emergent CT scan to search for further infection.

Slade had a CT scan late yesterday which showed lots of infection all over his chest cavity. It was in places the chest tubes can’t reach to drain, and in places the antibiotics couldn’t reach. He wasn’t getting any better.

This morning his GI, ICU and surgery teams agreed he needed to have another surgery to wash out his chest cavity - this was the only way to try and get him better. His infection is very, very serious. The original plan was to wash out both the left and right sides with a laparoscopic procedure. The right side was done in a previous surgery a few days ago. The left side was very infectious. They removed a lot of necrotic tissue. So much so - that they were unable to clean out the right side today. His body needs to rest. He has a new chest tube and a new drain from his back.

The plan is to take him back to the operating room tomorrow to do the right side. There is also a good chance they are going to need to take out the stent they had placed in the esophagus and place a wound vac directly there instead... this would require a scope procedure every 3 days to change the sponge they use. all of this is in effort to take control of the sepsis infection.

His right heart function has severely diminished function, his liver is angry and his kidneys are really struggling. His profusion is far less than ideal due to his heart function. The hope is that by cleaning out the infection, his organs will be able to get better. He may need support for those in the next few days.

Right now - we need slade to stay “stable” tonight so that he is eligible to go to the OR again tomorrow to finish his clean out. He NEEDS this to give his body a fighting chance. We need stable blood pressures. We need the diuretics to pull off fluid but not too fast. We need his heart rate to stay down and his fever to be minimal or entirely gone.

Again - we cannot thank everyone enough. We are so behind on replying and for that we are sorry. We may not reply but we see, hear and are SO appreciative of every single one of you. We have stormed God with prayers and we need to keep being loud.

Tears of sadness, gratitude and hope…we just want Slade to be okay. He’s still very much in the woods. So please keep praying. He’s not done fighting yet. Come on slade - mommy needs you.