Thursday, September 20, 2007

Back to Basics

Andrew was switched back to the conventional ventilator today. They started him off at standard full-sedation settings, so it's giving him 30 breaths per minute. They'll slowly wean as he has good gases, though they can only wean so far while he's sedated. Getting him off the hi-fi hopefully will make it less critical that he's completely paralyzed, as breathing above the vent is much more disruptive to the hi-fi. They still won't let him wake up completely, but perhaps they won't have to increase his dosage as much as they did last week.

They're continuing to increase his feeds, and are now going up every six hours, instead of every twelve hours. He's at 11cc per hour right now....advancing at the same rate, he could be at full feeds in three days.

We have a meeting with the doctor tomorrow, where we'll hopefully get more details, but we got a quick update today. It appears that they're leaning strongly toward removal of a portion of his left lung...how much is unclear. They'd also like to do the stomach valve surgery (Nissen fundoplication) at the same time. They're talking to the surgeons to see who's available for the surgery, which could happen as early as next week.

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