Evening Update - Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Tyson suffered a lung collapse earlier this morning and it was healing well. However, this afternoon the lower left side began collapsing as well and so now they are rotating him from lying on one side to the other. The lungs seem to be re-inflating well enough but they are not sure what is causing the problem. When they deep-suction him, they expected to see a lot more secretions than they did, considering we mentioned he had come down with a cold. However, they don't seem to have to suction him very often and so they aren't sure that this was the cause of the collapse. This afternoon he also had three episodes of de-sat'ing (the kind where we would see all the doctors and nurses running into the room - the kind that Brian and I have never had to witness happening in our room but were wide-eyed when it happened to others!) Tyson just unexplainably dropped in O2 sats, but no one knows why. It wasn't even as though they had just upset him by suctioning him or repositioning him. Quite often something like that can upset a baby and his oxygen levels would drop just from being upset, or the blood pressure or heart rate would go up. But the nurse said he was just lying there peacefully one second and the next second his sats dropped to the low 40's.

Well we must be patient as we await answers to his blood cultures, which should tell us what kind of infection (if any) he is fighting.

Currently Tyson is comfortable. He is on half the amount of morphine as he was last night, the sedatives have worn off and he is not on any paralyzers anymore either. He did spend some time awake and alert this afternoon (when we weren't there) and the nurse said he just looked around peacefully. He hasn't started Ng tube feeding as of yet because they feel he isn't quite ready for that yet. When they do start, it will be my pumped milk (yes, I am pumping again, fun fun...) He is a little puffy because they think he wasn't getting quite enough fluids overnight and was a little dehydrated as a result. They are trying to adjust the amount of intake based on how he handles things.

We are heading to bed early tonight as we have been up since 6 am Monday morning. Thankfully, we have a parent room in the hospital for the night. The appropriate protocol is to hand in the key in the morning and not to expect the room to be available again necessarily, but we will see if we can "renew" the room. We also have a Social Worker looking into a hotel room for us.

That is all for now. Thanks for your prayers.

Good night.

Brian and Mel:)