Holding on

Isaiah is hanging in there. There, of course, have been ups and downs, but he is fighting none the less. And of course we are praying. Isaiah is currently on the Decadron steroid which is the stronger more aggressive one. It hopefully will help to relax the walls of his premature lungs and the blood vessels to let the blood flow easier. This would also help the blood pressure in the lungs come up and stay up. It would also help the pressure in the heart and keep it from working so hard to pump the blood through those ity bity vessels.

He is now back on the ventilator-again. He seems to like the oscillator but it's not good for his little lungs to stay on it too long. This will be the 3rd time he's been on it. When they change machines, they have to bag him in order to keep the lungs inflated. He was fine initially, but shortly after he was switched, one of his lungs collapsed because there wasn't enough pressure in there to keep them open so he had to be bagged again to get them open. I was at the hospital at the time, but while I waited or them to change him over, I went to the weekly "Scrapbooking" class and made a page for him.

The Drs have taken him off his sedation drugs and are now only using a morphine drip. He's being weaned off the bp meds as well. Between the sedation drugs and bp meds, decreasing them will allow the Drs to increase the amount of TPN he receives. He really needs to grow more. Hopefully this growth will help with the lungs as well. He is still on an antibiotic because there are lots of picc lines in him. Too easy for infection to be introduced.

On another note, Isaiah had both chest tubes removed this morning! Fluid build up has slowed significantly. Dr. Lancaster wanted to leave them in and start weaning him off the octreotide, but when Dr. Holcomb came in, he decided to be aggressive and just remove the tubes. Isaiah gets x-rays of his chest every morning so they can keep an eye on whether the fluid builds back up on not.

Please pray that this steroid works!

Thank you all!

Team Piggott