02/25/2007

Very little to report. I got up this morning and felt much better from my cold and figured, weather be danged.. I'm going to see my son. The roads were fine and I didn't stay long just in case. He, of course, looks beautiful as always. His vent settings are back up and his lungs are hazy again, as to be expected after the steroids. His blood gases got really lousy overnight so they changed his vent settings back to 35 breaths a minute with a PEEP of 9 and blah blah. I don't know the rest. He's doing a little better right now than he did coming off the first round of steroids and his blood gases looked good. They are drawing a CBC and CRP tonight to see if he has an infectious process going on. They don't think he does but they want to be sure. Today they decided to fluid-restrict Emery to try and get rid of some of the fluid in his lungs. The doctor said he wanted to make Emery a 'lean, mean breathing machine.' The next round of steroids will start Thursday. He did desat quite a bit while I was there today, but when I stood there and had my hands on his feet and head he wouldn't desat at all. In fact, if I could do that 24 hours a day he'd probably be fine. He likes to be touched but not held...well, at least he's going to have to used to being held. The doc said that when they extubated Emery on Friday he had a 50/50 chance of making it without being ventilated, and he was growing bacteria in his ET tube so it was kind of like killing two birds with one stone... give him a chance to breathe and then get him a new ET tube. I guess he actually pulled the CPAP tubes out once. The doc said that he did really well until the last half hour when he was just really struggling and so they reintubated. It's okay. I can be patient. Hope everyone survived the storm. I had flickering power and was blessedly lucky last night but heard some of you weren't. Talk to everyone soon! Love, Sarah, Erik and Emery