05/03/2007

Well, I completely forgot to mention the March of Dimes walk. It went very well. Phoebe (our family Weimeraner who thinks she is a person) walked with us, and team baby Emery collected $340! I want to thank Jill for walking up in Chicago and her phenomenal collection of $1300! Oh, and thanks Becky and Seajaye for coming to walk, too! Emery's been acting a little strange. His heart rate is really high. Well, it's always a little high because he's on theophylline (a medicaiton for the lungs) which I lovingly call baby crack. Well, his baby crack gets increased about every 2 to 3 days and Dr. A had mentioned once that he didn't even know if it was doing any good. I got excited today because it is blood gas and chest x-ray day, and I was really hoping for a wean down in the pressures, but apparently his chest x-ray looked like crap. I finally said "okay, here's the thing. Em's been off the vent now for nearly 6 weeks and we've only gone down 2 cm of water pressure. At this rate he will be home by Christmas." She said she was glad I brought it up because a trach was actually mentioned in rounds today. I have a call in to Dr. A, but I believe he's out of town. The thing is, Erik and I do not want a trach but we can't leave Emery in the hospital forever. We don't want it in the sense that who really WANTS to bring home a baby on a vent? It scares me to death, really, and yet I know I'm capable of handling it, but there is definite fear there. It's just really time to have Emery home. He's so far behind developmentally, and he's never once attempted a feed. He's almost 5 months old and has been strictly fed through an NG tube. The NNP said it was very reasonable to start talking about a trach. So, that's where we're at with that. She did say that if we trached him now we'd have to wait a month to bring him home, so apparently it's a fairly quick process to getting him home once the trach is established. Now, the good news about Emery. He had his eye exam yesterday, and the ROP has regressed signficantly, so much that they won't be back to check it for another 3 weeks. The pre-plus disease is gone and he's regressed nearly to zone 3. May is a very busy month for Emery. He has an echocardiogram to check his heart to make sure there is no right-sided stress, he has his kidney stone check, and he has another eye exam, and from what it sounds like it's possible he may have a trach. His CO2 was beautiful today at 49, but his chest x-ray apparently looked like crap with only 7-rib expansion and some more cloudiness.