Getting Better (knock on wood)

Whew! We've almost survived this week. I'm SO ready for it to be over but it seems like things are looking up. After Wednesday I thought things couldn't get worse but then Thursday came along. Johnny had a "code blue" situation where his heart and breathing stopped and they had to do chest compressions and the "bag" him (breath for him) and the whole bit. Luckily we weren't there at the time, apparently it was pretty scary. We had planned to get to the hospital early that morning but ended up sleeping in. I'm so grateful we did. I know I wouldn't have been able to handle seeing that happen to my baby. He was pretty unstable from about 8:30 to 10:30 am. When we got to the hospital around 11:00 am he was stable and they had him sedated. We kept the nurses and respiratory therapy team pretty busy that day.

I'm a little bugged because everything was caused by the stupid intubator. The tube caused irritation and mucus and when Johnny would cough the tube would get clogged and he would stop breathing. He was finally extubated on Thursday night and he hasn't had a problem since. So now his throat is swollen and irritated and his cries sound like Donald Duck, all raspy kind of like a smoker baby. Poor buddy. And once his throat gets better he'll have to be intubated again for his surgery next Thursday. :( But this time they'll extubate him as soon as possible. I guess we just experienced the so called "NICU two step" one step forward, two steps back.

We got the infection test results and Johnny has a Staph aureus bacteria in his blood. But don't panic it's not what you usually think of when you hear "staph infection." They've already started him on the antibiotics for it and recent blood tests show that it's working and the infection is going away. He should only need to be on the antibiotics for another 3 days. We're lucky that they caught it so early.

He's done remarkably better today so I think we're moving on and things will get better. I hope this next week isn't so bad and they can get his second eye surgery done. On another note, through this entire thing Johnny has continued to tolerate his feedings and gain weight. He now weighs about 2 lbs. 13 oz. almost 3 lbs.! :) And we finally got to hold him. We hadn't been able to since Sunday. He loves being held (especially when Mommy holds him) and we love it too. :)