Constant Improvement

Davis is a trooper. He's had a good day and is continuing to rest nicely.  The docs came by for their rounds this afternoon and had great things to say about Davis' progress to date.  Although he failed his first extubation the other day, they're continuing to taper him off the ventilator again and are planning to try to extubate again tomorrow or the following day if all goes well with his trials (where they turn off the vent for a few hours and see how he does).  So we're hoping this works out so we can once again hear his raspy voice and see much more of his face.  Plus, it's so much easier to hold him and move him around when he's not hooked up to all the breathing tubes which are cumbersome and stiff.  His heart is continuing to shrink since they admitted him on the 10th, due to a reduction in all the extra fluid, and the medications they now have him on.  They said it's a result of finally figuring him out and leveling everything back to a relative normal level.  So every bit of heart shrinkage is allowing more and more lung room, which is also going to improve his breathing without the ventilator.  All good progress.  As far as his fever goes, his temp is back down to a good safe range where they're no longer concerned.  And they are not seeing any infection or growth on the cultures they're watching from multiple areas (blood, urine, stool, IV line etc), so we think that the fever/infection scare is now over.   If all continues to look good tomorrow afternoon (48 hrs later), they will take him back off the antibiotics.  The final thing they are watching is the slow closure of the duct in his heart.  Duct explained here.   We're all born with a small duct that closes after birth to allow for increased pulmonary blood flow.  Check out the link to learn more about this. But basically, once this duct closes, they're hoping his heart continues to perform as well as it is now (blood oxygen levels stay high).  If its performance declines once the duct closes, they may need to intervene by performing the shunt surgery.  But this duct is already showing signs of closure and he's continuing to do really well so everyone is hopeful that this will go smoothly.  The other concern is that this duct will never close, which would require them to run a line into his heart and basically blow up a balloon that would simulate the closure so they could see how this changes the heart function and blood oxygen levels.  So that's what's going on here today, lots of good news and more waiting.  Overall Davis seems content and looks great lately.  My dad and I are hanging out together watching over him and keeping him company today and my mom and Kelly are on their way after work.  This guy has a lot of family that loves him and I'm hoping he is getting that message by all the kissing, skin to skin time and talking to that he's getting from everyone.  :)

X-ray on the left is from the day he was born.  His entire chest was filled with his heart.  You can see a little black outline on the left side where his lungs were stuffed, but the rest is heart.  The darker area at the bottom right is air in his stomach/intestine. The right side is his chest as of this morning.  The heart (white oval) is still larger than normal, but you can see obvious progress (shrinkage).  The darker area around the heart is all lungs now.  :)

Davis, Grandpa and the giraffe spending quality time together.