Moving Target

The morning report from the nurse is that the attending doctor thinks Mattie might come home on Friday. Wow! But this doesn't seem quite consistent with what we've been hearing about what needs to happen before he's discharged. They're still trying to calibrate his blood pressure medicine, which means first getting him on the right doses and meds to keep the pressures at the right levels, and then seeing if they can wean down at all from those doses so that he's on the minimum amount needed. And since the effects of the medicines aren't always immediate, our impression is that the process will take a few days -- and they don't really want us to have to go through that process at home. Also, if they decide to do any more tests (and they're in fact doing a more detailed kidney imaging study on Thursday), it's a whole lot easier to have that taken care of while he's in the hospital rather than trying to arrange it as an outpatient.

The doc has taken Mattie's feeding tube away, which surprised us because he hasn't yet gone a full day when he's taken all of his feedings by bottle -- they've still been having to give him some of it by tube. (Of course, he can always have another tube put in if he ends up needing it -- it would only take a nurse a minute or two to do it -- but hopefully he'll rise to the occasion.) And it seems like the usual procedure is also to wean off the calorie supplements in the formula, and to make sure he's still gaining enough weight (or not losing weight) while doing all of his feeding by mouth. So that also seems like it would take a few days.

In any case, we'll try to be prepared for Friday, but next week may be more realistic. Very exciting!

Jamesie is doing well. He's still on the ventilator so that they can give him pain medicine, but he seemed comfortable when we were there last night, and the nurse said he was resting well today. He's retaining a ton of fluid, though. He's rocking the scales at an astounding 6 lbs, 7 oz. (By comparison, Mattie is around 5 lbs, 12 oz.) Hopefully he'll be able to get rid of some of the fluid over the next few days -- it can't feel good to be that puffy, and that also makes it harder for him to breathe.