Tuesday, February 3

This morning Caden made lots of forward progress. At shift change, the nurses removed both his chest tubes. The doctors didn't think there was much drainage coming from them so decided it was time for them to come out. They left the tube in the abdomen for now though.

During doctor rounds they decided to remove his catheter, his rectal temperature probe and his PICC line. His white blood cell count has been a little high and they want to remove any infection risks they can by taking out lines that are not necessary. With the removal of the PICC line, they had to adjust where they ran the remaining medications through. They stopped one of the pain medications as well. So, he is currently only on one pain medication, potassium, lasix, lipids, TPN and breast milk. That is a much reduced number of lines than he did have, so we are happy about that.

He was much more awake today and looking around. It's so nice to see him in this state again as opposed to being paralyzed with no movement or awareness. They are still trying to suction him regularly in order to get all the mucus out of his lungs. The nurses both in CVICU and NICU have all commented that he seems to handle all the tubes and everything very well. They say he is very mild. That would be nice since Kyler is very intense. It would be great to have a baby with a more mild temperament but we will love him regardless.

My mom's cousin came over to visit today. It was really nice for us to see her and it gave her and my mom a chance to catch up as well. It is always nice for us to see friends and family here since we are so isolated from most of them. She took us out to lunch which was a treat.

Overall, it was a good day for Caden and that relieves a lot of stress for us. They increased the amount of breast milk he was getting all day long. But they are planning on trying to extubate tomorrow so they will discontinue the feeds a few hours prior to doing that. Hopefully it goes smoothly and he will be able to tolerate it better than last time.

When we were at the hospital tonight after shift change, we saw Dr. Reddy and he talked to us briefly. He said he really felt they shouldn't try to extubate before Thursday because Caden had been paralyzed for so many days. He wanted him to have the rest he needed and allow his lungs to do a lot of the work on their own, not all controlled by the ventilator. So we'll see what happens.