by The last couple of days have been relatively steady.
AJ had his bandage taken off and I was surprised at how good it looks. He’s been coming down off all of his meds nicely, he’s down to I believe just milrinone and Lovenox for blood clots. Other than that the rest of his IVs are all nutrition/carriers. Because of this he’s been very alert and a wiggly little baby. He’s pretty happy too. He’s not on any pain killers – they have some on hand to give him as needed if he needs them, but he’s been happy and content without them.
On his ventilator they’ve made a number of changes and he’s breathing over it nicely. His nitric was dropped down to 20% when I left last night (it had been 40%) and when we arrived this morning it was down to 5%. from here they will drop it 1% every four hours until the nitrous is off. There have been whispers of working towards having him extubated early next week, which is sooner than I expected.
He hasn’t had any tube feedings since he was in Iowa City, so he’s been on IV nutrition for nearly all of his life, but he’s currently getting his first tube feeding in around 3 weeks now! My freezer will be rather full when we do get home, so I’m hoping Aaron and Averie are eating through some of the food from the freezers!
Last night AJ got to Skype with his big sister and Nana, Averie likes to call AJ “bubba”. And he really does seem to respond to her voice. She loves him so much!
AJ also was given a pacifier for the first time last night. He definitely still has a very strong suck!
The only “issues” we are having at the moment are in relation to his arterial line – it keeps spasming and is hard to get a good read or draw any labs out of. There had been some worry about his belly again late in the week, it started to look red and distended again, but there’s nothing to be found on X-rays, ultrasounds or in cultures, and the size has started to go down on its own – best guess at this point is just fluid retention and needing to poop! I joked that we all tend to retain everything around our bellies and he just wants to fit in.
He also gets incredibly angry the instant he has a wet diaper, but he settles just as fast once it’s changed. And he keeps bordering on trying to suck on his thumb. Eek!
Friday I took Las to the airport to send her home. After that I popped over to what my phone said was the nearest target to the airport and I ended up in New Jersey. I picked up a couple pairs of jeans (2 sizes smaller than my pre-pregnancy size – thanks morning, noon, and night sickness!) and managed to even pop into the mall that was next door to finally get my nails fixed. Then last night I managed a lengthy hot bubble bath. It was nice to just take a couple of hours for myself throughout the day.
So, in summary, thus far, things are still going well – and progressing faster than I had expected. Please keep us in your prayers, we were reminded heavily that recovery could easily be more difficult than surgery, so although things are looking positive right now we still need all the prayers, happy thoughts and “good mojo” that we can get!
