Sunday, October 24, 2010

First Stroller Ride!

Caleb had another great day. He got to go for his first stroller ride today. Now, he is only hooked up to two pumps, so they loaded the pumps on board and walked around the 5th floor. Phil said that it was great.

Caleb is still doing great breathing all on his own. His oxygen saturation is around 80 to 85 percent and they want him between 70 and 80 percent. He seems to like being just outside the range the doctors want. I hope this isn't a sign of what he will be like when he is a teenager.

There was some kind of misunderstanding, so Caleb was not increased to 24 calorie breastmilk until around 6:00 pm tonight. I was frustrated when Phil told me this morning. You know how you can work for six months straight, but on the day before you go on vacation you feel like there is no way you could work another minute? If we had to stay in Ann Arbor for another three months, we could do it, but with the end in sight, a 24 hour delay seems like a major pain. At least we are on track now.

Today, they switched Caleb's last diuretic to the oral version. Tomorrow morning, we will see if that switch will hold.

Phil tried the bottle with Caleb again today. This morning, he was not successful and this evening, he was able to get him to drink part of the bottle, but he did not finish it. Caleb has been sleeping a lot, so finding a time when he is awake, happy and ready to try the bottle has been tricky.

Tomorrow, Caleb will have another echocardiogram to look at his heart and assess his blood clot. If the echo looks good, it will serve as his discharge echo. This would be the first step in the checklist to go home.

Our list of stuff we need to have done before we leave and our progress:
- Optimize his diuretic doses (In progress)
- Switch the last diuretic from IV to oral (Switched today, see results tomorrow)
- Optimize his blood pressure medicine (In progress)
- Switch to 24 calorie breastmilk (Switched today, see results tomorrow)
- Switch from continuous feeding to feeding once every three hours
- Determine what needs to be done to work around the blood clot (Tomorrow)