The Latest on Antonio

 This was another week of waiting for us and Antonio, but with more positive than negative. We ended up starting his steroids on Tuesday, and by Wednesday afternoon I started noticing slight improvements in his respiratory status. Monday he had sort of declined so we started out on 70% prior to the steroids and he was hitting his pressure limits on his vent. Wednesday we stayed in the 60s, we went back to 70% Wednesday night, but then got down to 55% briefly Thursday. We got down to 51% yesterday, started out today on 60%, now we're on 56%. He needs higher oxygen at night still, but not near as extreme as before. But if we could keep inching down in that sort of pattern that would be great, I know not to expect anything too quickly. They were expecting him to maybe not even notice the steroids until Tuesday next week, so I'm happy with his progress. The downside is that he is also very angry again because of the steroids, so we've had to increase sedation, which is making h...

The past week was pretty uneventful, which is fine. We really just wanted him to stay stable and grow and rest. A nurse practitioner attempted to fix his PICC line on Monday, but didn't have any success. The problem seemed to be that Interventional Radiology sutured it in place crooked, creating a 90 degree angle in the line. So he still has to get stuck on his heels for his labs and it alarms multiple times a day because it has some kind of kink in it still. We may go back to Interventional Radiology tomorrow since it's time for a dressing change anyway so that they can try to actually rewire it. I don't have super high hopes that they'll be able to make it draw blood and run without issue, but it's worth a shot since we have to take the dressing off anyway.  The morphine drip seems to have helped and he's getting scheduled anxiety medicine to keep him breathing slow and steady. It's probably the most comfortable week he's had, although the medications ...

Antonio turned 10 weeks old this week on 10/10, I thought that was neat. Thankfully, but also unfortunately, where we are today isn't much different than a week ago. He had been getting his "as needed" pain medicine around the clock as if it were scheduled, but last Friday the nurse didn't want to give it until he looked agitated, which led to him becoming extremely agitated. We basically chased his agitation all day and even all day the next day after that. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were better days. The only problem was that they retaped his breathing tube too high again, leaving him with a massive leak even if they inflated the little balloon to try to get rid of the leak. Prior to that he had been dealing with the leak, but it was positional and could be corrected by inflating the balloon. Because we were going to have to retape him anyway, we went ahead and changed out his tube for a bigger one on Tuesday so that he wouldn't have the leak and there would be...

The past week for To ñ io has been slightly less hectic than the week before, but it was still constant highs and lows. He finally stopped having such drastic increases in oxygen requirement every night, and had a couple of pretty stable days Friday and Saturday. We had him down to 49% at one time. We thought maybe he was turning a corner, but Sunday proved us wrong. He was very drifty and ended up on more oxygen and was just having much more difficulty breathing. Sometimes the steroid course can cause them to be really upset all the time, so we went up on the amount of pain medication he's getting. I hate that because it's really not good for his neuro development, but I also hate seeing him so upset. Monday was similar. Tuesday and Wednesday were more positive days. He was finally in a good spot sedation wise and his swelling was nearly gone. He looks like our baby again which is really nice! I've read studies on massage therapy in NICU babies and the results are amazing ...