04/10/2007

Good evening from Emeryville. I hope all is well with you all, and I hope everyone noticed the new pics. Emery is certainly getting very big. It's official. We're 2 weeks off the vent today (5 days off the steroids). The kid is going to give me a heart attack though. I mean, it's not bad like he's sick or anything like that, but it took 99 days to get the kid extubated and I want sooooo bad for this to be a turning point, but sometimes little love has other ideas. Yesterday I talked to his nurse and she said that his glucose was 269, which is way high especially for being off of steroids, so I sat around like a big stress ball waiting for rounds to find out what they were going to do and had acid reflux the entire time (I'm out of Nexium) and then called back at rounds and they drew another blood sugar and it was 66 before he ate! And then Mr. Emery decides to start having reflux! So because of this I've been begging the nurses and docs to put Emery on something for it, but they said it's not bad enough to warrant any medication. Tonight I went up to see my buddy and while I was holding him he got so fussy his heart rate kept going up over 200 and he kept holding his breath and arching his back and tooting really loud. I had to leave to come home and when I got home the nurse said she had to give him Ativan and morphine because his heart rate wouldn't come down, but I sat and watched him and he never refluxed or spit up so who knows what's wrong with him now. I guess in some ways I really hoped getting off the vent would be the downhill stretch for him, but he has so many other problems that it's just going to take a while. I just don't want him getting sick. Dr. A always said that being sick is bad for babies. Speaking of Dr. A, when I called the NICU yesterday morning and was talking to the nurse and she kept saying "hold on.. I'll let you talk to her in a minute." I didn't know what she was talking about, but sure enough, Dr. A was in the room checking on Emery. I talked to him for a bit, and he was very excited that Emery was off the vent. The doctors had a pow-wow about Emery yesterday afternoon about whether or not to continue the nitric oxide. They weren't sure if it was necessary to continue it, but they decided to go ahead and keep it on. Anyway the Dr. came in to talk to us on Saturday and Erik noticed that he had a tie-dye shirt on underneath his scrubs and asked him about it, and it turns out Dr. D is a big Grateful Dead fan, so guess who is Erik's favorite doctor now? He wants to get his number to see if he'll go to shows with him over the summer. I'll admit, I am worried about Emery. We're supposedly first out the door to bay 2, but each day I go there, there is another empty bed so they keep sending babies out before Emery. Dr. D said he's in no hurry to get Emery there anyway, and he is at a higher risk of infection over in bay 2, so I'm okay with him where he's at, but there is part of me that thinks as soon as he is in bay 2 then that's when we start working on getting him home. He's got such a long way to go, though. The good news is everyone is so very excited that Emery is 2 weeks off the vent. They have been weaning his rate by 2 each day, and when his chest x-ray is over-expanded is when they will start to wean the pressures. I do so hope he doesn't aspirate. He really was a fussy butt tonight while I held him. He seemed very gassy and uncomfortable, and he toots like an old man. You can hear it in the hall...