It's always something

It feels like no sooner that I write something about great news that there has to be some countervailing bad news to equalize it. Although Woody's brain scan came back clean as a whistle, I was called back up from the farm by NICU this evening because his blood gases (CO₂ mostly) have been trending bad since about the time we left this afternoon. As a result, Woody has been switched to a different ventilator, a large and obscene behemoth referred to as the oscillator. The theory behind this contraption is that where 50 breaths per minute are not doing the trick, why not go up to 700 micro-breaths per minute?

I'd love to have been in the developing room when the doctor proposed this. "Yeah, let's try pumping a whole lot of tiny breaths into the super-duper preemies and see if that does the trick!" "Sounds great, Ted."

Anyway, It's worrisome but so far Woody looks like he's responding very well to it. They've been able to decrease the oxygen in the air they are giving him to just above 30% (remember that 21% is regular air), which is pretty good, especially if you consider that when his blood gases were doing poorly earlier they were cranking up the percentage well above that. This most recent crisis has also temporarily put a halt to his introduction to food, which is frustrating too. But this is exactly as we were warned: even in the best of cases, there is a maddening back and forth where one problem looks like it is addressed and then the next problem crops up, or we move back a step or two in the flow chart and try to get something we thought was taken care of rectified again.

As seems to be usual, our primary worry for those offering prayers is the lungs. This will continue to be the main worry, if we are lucky, for weeks or months. Thanks for your support.