We've had a busy couple of days. Sorry for the delay in posting. Allan and I are hanging out in the PICU. Griff and Flora are hanging out at home. Another day older and deeper in debt.
Allan seems to be doing better since Saturday. His color is good, he's very alert, and he's been maintaining his sats very well. He's had a couple of times when he's dropped them, but very low and not for very long. They've tweaked a number of things and run a number of tests -- echocardiogram, EKG, upper GI. They tried to do a bronchoscopy (putting a flexible tube down his airway to see whether there is something constricting the airway) but he dropped his heartrate when they started the sedation so they stopped. They don't really think he has an airway problem, but they were trying to rule it out. They were also hoping to suck some stuff out of his lung so they could look at it to see if he is aspirating. The upper GI showed that he isn't refluxing and that, as far as they can tell, what he sucks down is going in the right places. The heart studies show that he has a thickening of the walls of the right ventricle which is the part of the heart that pushes blood in to the lungs. Since his lungs are crappy, the heart has to work harder to push the blood through. So they have started him on Viagra (no joke) to help lower the pressure necessary to push the blood through. What else have they done? He's had steroids and antibiotics and no one knows which tweak or which combinations of tweaks have helped, but long may it last. He has established himself as a very popular fellow in the PICU and is collecting new girlfriends left, right and center.
Griffith is doing great. He eats at least 3 ounces at a go and sometimes more. We haven't weighed him lately, but he is certainly a more than 8 pound baby. Eight pounds of pure contrary. Yesterday he was so tired, and so was I, but he would not go to sleep. Every time I put him down, his eyes would fly open and he would fuss. So I decided to take advantage of the sunny day and we went for a stroll -- he lasted about 20 minutes and passed out. When I was too far from home to zip back and catch my own nap. Oh well. Then Rosa came over for a visit and we all sat out on the deck and watched the birds and listened to the yippy dogs next door. Good times. He's getting to be a very big boy -- he slept from 10 until 2 and then from 2:30 or so until 6. We had a good time this morning. When he finished breakfast, he was all wide awake and smiley. We laid in bed for 45 minutes listening to the rain on the roof and watching the ceiling fan.