Monday, August 24, 2009

A Little Something For All Of You

Pretty!

Everyone feeling better? Excellent!

So, no real change for Jane today. She was back on 100% oxygen this morning, down to 70% when I left at 4 pm, and is back flirting with 100% again tonight. She's still slightly collapsed in her right lung, but her afternoon x-ray showed an improvement over the morning's film. BUT all of her labs are back in and there is no sign of infection anywhere (yes!) and they've taken her off the antibiotics and antifungal. They'd taken her feeds down just slightly over the weekend, from 15 ccs to 14, because of the extra liquid she was getting with the medications. Now that she's off some of the meds they're putting her back on full feeds, which are now 16 ccs and she's scarfing it down (woo-hoo!). Why the bump to 16? Well, they determine full feeds by weight and Jane now weighs...

THREE POUNDS! Can I get an amen?

Except for the whole breathing thing, she's doing really, really well. It's absurd. She's completely baffling the nurses and respiratory techs, because she looks so perfectly healthy. Seriously! She's pink and active and looking around and eating well and gaining weight and responding really well/tolerantly to every. single. thing. they do to her. (Um, except when they try to tweak the ventilator settings down. She is not a fan.) In fact, she does so particularly well when they have to lift her and move her around, the resident today thinks she needs preemie aerobics. Swear to god, that was her term. She compared Jane's behavior to a post-op patient -- often they feel awful when they're lying in bed but feel better as soon as they're made to get up and walk around. Her theory is that when Jane's moved around a lot it forces her to take deeper breaths, so her oxygen saturation goes up. Hey, I'm up for it. I'll lift her all day if they'll let me. I'll knit her a tiny track suit for her workouts if they think it'll help.

So, there you go. We have a meeting tomorrow with the attending physician, which was set up before things got shifty. We were supposed to be talking with him about the long view; I'll let you know what really goes down.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just another internet stranger here, rooting for you and Jane. Warm thoughts for you both.

tia said...

Howdy, stranger! We'll take warm thoughts and good wishes from any quarter, and I appreciate your taking the time to send yours along. My thanks to you.