A City Under Siege

We spoke to the doctor about the sonogram, and your brain appears fine.  No brain bleeds.  However, those vein access issues are a sticking point.

You see, every baby in the NICU needs some way of having medication, nutrients, and other substances delivered to their blood stream.  Currently, that's the job of the bionic umbilical cord.  However, the bionic umbilical cord becomes dangerous in a few days and they need some other substitute as a delivery mechanism.  Like I feared, the PICC line (which is relatively low risk) probably won't be viable since your veins are roughly the circumference of a thread.  They'll probably need to try something riskier.  That vein on your neck is nice and juicy, so they are contemplating cutting the skin on your neck, exposing the vein, and then putting in a cathedar.  This method introduces higher risk of infection and higher risk of bleeding compared to the PICC line, and of course they might simply collapse the vein altogether and lose access to it, thus starting the process over on a less desireable blood vessel.

This might sound peculiar, but when you are born so young, you have a limited number of "health" resources that the doctors and nurses can exploit.  Each procedure, whether successful or not, depletes some of those resources.  A simpler way of saying it is that there is only so much that a one pound baby can take.  It'll be a few months before you begin to grow and offer them more assets to work with, so until then we need to make due with what you have to offer.  Naturally, when it comes to resolving your problems, the doctors pluck the lowest hanging fruits in your treatment first; the methods that pose the lowest risk.  But as time goes on and they consume the lower fruits, they are forced to move toward more and more riskier options.  The higher fruits; the more invasive procedures (which usually involves something sharp).  The higher the fruit, the more harmful the fall can be.

It could be worse, I suppose.  If I had to elect a problem for you, it would probably be this one.  The reason?  If all goes well, there will be no lasting harm.  You could have a brain bleed or a collapsed lung or exploding intestines, after all.

If you were to be compared to a city, all of the facilities--- the power plant, city hall, the water treatment center--- would all be working well, but the roads into town would be too narrow to ship in freight.  You are like a city under siege.  It can last quite sometime under such conditions, but its only a matter of time before people begin to starve.