Ty has been in the PICU for a little over two weeks now. He’s still making progress! They got a little too overzealous with the weaning yesterday, and he had to come up a few notches last night due to CO2 build up. But that’s OK, since we want to them be as aggressive as possible so he doesn’t have even one extra day on the vent than necessary. He’s back on the paralytic this morning since he was definitely breathing against the oscillator. Being back on will likely help his blood gases and allow further weaning. His ventilation and oxygenation settings are still lower than they were yesterday morning. What’s very encouraging is that his subcutaneous air is still dissipating little by little. Once this is gone, and assuming his blood gases look good, he can be tried again on the APRV ventilator. His Mean Airway Pressure (MAP) on the oscillator is down from 30 several days ago to 15 today. While there are other important settings, this one most allows the trapped air to be reabsorbed and his lungs to remain undamaged. Tyler’s liver functions and kidney functions continue to be pretty stable. He presented with blood in his urine this morning, so they’re keeping an eye on that.
We are still being incredibly uplifted by all your prayers and encouraging comments on Caringbridge! We are so blessed to continue our stay at the local hotel (last we heard, our church family had contributed enough to have 71 days covered!), and on top of that we have folks dropping food off for us frequently. We finagled getting a microwave in our hotel room yesterday, so that helps a lot. Also, Ron and I are getting much more sleep since we have many volunteers to sit with Tyler at night. Once he is finally awake again, we know he’ll prefer mostly just Mom and Dad, so we’re trying to conserve energy now for later!