Wednesday, July 19, 2006

7/19/06: Day 5 (Wed.) Lungs Healing

First off, Happy Birthday to my Mom down in Florida!! I don't think we're planning a trip up to Tucson today. I'm working on getting paperwork done for medical leave, Evan's birth certificate and other stuff.

I spoke with Evan's nurse this morning (Marianne). She was the nurse on duty yesterday when he had the bad day. She said he is doing much better now. His morning chest x-ray still was a cloudy-white, but not as bad as yesterday. She said the doctors are just letting him run his course, there's not much worry at this point.

She said last night when they suctioned his lungs there was a little bit of a pink tinge indicating some blood, but this morning when she suctioned him again, he was all clear. Yesterday, prior to his episode right when we got there, Marianne had given him a dose of blood platelets which they think may have helped him heal faster. They think he had some sort of scratch in his lungs that caused all that blood to appear yesterday (which is a common thing due to that darn respirator). Last night, his red blood count was low, so he got a little bit of blood again. They are continuing to check his blood gas counts every few hours.

They hope to take him off the bililights maybe tomorrow since the jaundice is working its way out. Marianne said his leg bruising is almost gone also. So all in all, it's a good day so far. I'll call the night shift nurses this evening to see how all goes today and post more later.

----------
Chronological age: 0 months 0 weeks 5 days
Adjusted/Gestastional age: 31 4/7 weeks
----------------------
UMC Charges: $9,506.05
Running Total: $86,086.84
----------------------

No comments: