Today was another typical day by Luke. They are trying slowly to work him off the ventilator. They lowered his PIP down to 25 from 26. I'm not going to try and explain that cause I don't even really understand it. All I can say is that we were at 31 a couple weeks and we need to get around 21 before we can try to come off the Jet. They change other numbers every once and awhile, but that is that main one. It all goes on his expansion of his lungs. That was the main thing for the day. He is up to 2 pounds and 9 ounces, hopefully we can either speed up the gain or at least keep it constant. He was having some more "desatting" and bradycardia issues every once and a while. That is still a preemie thing, but it can drive a mother crazy. I'm getting better at ignoring the beeps, but I still tend to look. Sometimes it can be due to the ET tube and other times it is just him. I watch other preemies around him do it without a tube and they are older by a couple months. Luke's NNP showed Jonathin and I Luke's x-rays from when he got here to now, and he has grown. However, I did't really know about all she was showing us, other than the chronic lung issues. That is what they are mostly showing us. That was the major issues going on now. We are praying for his lungs to heal so we can move off the jet. Thanks everyone once again the continued support.
Jordan
I love about not explaining the PIP. I spent forever trying to explain PEEP, pressure, FiO2, tidal volume blah blah. By the time we got to the jet it was like - forget it, he's still on the vent. That's all that matters lol.
ReplyDeleteIf you want comparison, here are Emery's 'good' chest x-rays in the NICU
http://littlemanbig-emery.blogspot.com/2007/10/just-quick-grateful.html
The one on the left was right when he first came off the vent and he didn't have the best expansion. The one on the right was after he was done with steroids (he had 9-rib expansion and looked much better and they were surprised because he usually had steroid rebound.)
Anyway, yes, it looks like it's snowing in his lungs.
Now when he gets chest x-rays you can still see the scarring - the cysts are all gone - but there are just small areas of scarring left. That's the extent of his chronic lungs now.
In fact, we went to the hospital yesterday for some scans and he had to have them done under anesthesia. He barely required O2 (they only used it per protocol) and then even then he stayed at 99-100 the entire time. I told the nurse I would have paid serious money to have had a monitor with numbers like that back in the NICU days.
Hope you're getting rest!