Mon 5th October
Day 28
| One day short of Nathan's fourth (week) birthday, and
he's looking fantastic. A real champ. Making about 100 different faces
every minute, looking around him, giving whatever comes into range
of his mouth a good suck. He's off the CPAP at the moment, and has
been for a number of hours. He's breathing oxygen enriched air, about
thirty percent. It's great to be a mum and dad.
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Sun 4th October
Day 27
| Another good day. Nathan got to meet both of his uncles
for the first time, although he seemed less than interested in them.
He also spent a number of hours today off the CPAP. The nurses
can feed oxygen into his incubator, and carefully monitor and increase
or decrease the percentage of oxygen in Nathan's air depending on
the amount of oxygen in his blood, keeping him at roughly between
87 and 97 percent. When we visited, Nathan's air was at 30% oxygen
(our air has 21% oxygen).
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Sat 3rd October
Day 26
| More cause for celebration. Nathan is off the ventilator,
and on to a CPAP. The end going into his nose is different this time.
It's a single tube (or prong, as it's called) and so we hope that
it will do less damage to Nathan's nose, and cause him less distress.
Nathan also came out for a cuddle, for the first time in a long
time. Words cannot describe the feelings...
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Fri 2nd October
Day 25
| Well good news. In reverse order, Laura has a new car,
Kevin the roofer has ensured the future dryness of Nathan's room,
and Nathan cotinues on the road to recovery (we very much hope)
Nathan's morphine was turned off this evening. He will be receiving
future doses through Laura's milk, of which Nathan is now getting
4ml an hour. The line into the vein into Nathan's scalp will be
left in, in case of future emergencies. The chest drain has also
gone.
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Thu 1st October
Day 24
| A much better day for Nathan. There was no more air from
the chest drain, and by the afternoon, it had been removed. Nathan
and the ventilator are slowly learning to live with each other. The
setting is now SIMV, and the "peeps" that show that the ventilator
had to breathe for Nathan range from one every four to 10 breaths.
The morphine levels are being reduced, and Nathan seems more like
a baby. His feeds have increased to 2ml per hour. Let's keep hoping.
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Wed 30th
Day 23
| An eventful day for Nathan started in the early hours
of the morning. He started to lose the ability to breathe properly.
This turned out to be a pneumothorax, or collapse of the lung, which
was caused by air leaking out of the left lung into the cavity surrounding
it (the pleural cavity). The doctors put a tube into Nathan's side
and this allowed the air in the cavity to escape. The tube is still
there now, but no more air is coming out, so we hope that the hole
in the lung that allowed the air to escape has healed.
Mid-morning. Nathan was having his mouth cleaned out by a device
not unlike the one at the dentist that hoovers out the saliva in
your mouth. He was on full ventilation
(Controlled Mechanical Ventilation or CMV) when he started to
fight the ventilator. He was trying to breathe out while the machine
was breathing in, and his lungs stalled. It's called splinting.
They managed to get him breathing again, and have upped the morphine
dose.
Later in the evening, the line into Nathan's vein failed. The vein
closed down. After an hour, they got a line into the vein in his
scalp. By that time the morphine was starting to run out, so it
was a relief that Nathan is resting again. He needs all he can get.
The course of
dexamethazone has started. This is due to continue for nine
days.
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Tue 29th
Day 22
| Still on Morphine, Nathan is subdued, but we think he's
seen the bottom and is on his way back up. His nose is still a bit
mangled, but it's got time to recover.
When we visited Nathan was receiving a blood transfusion. 14ml
over four hours. They also give him
Fruxemide as a diuretic, so he can get rid of some of that volume
of liquid (and we all know how babies do that).
The nurses say that the next stage in Nathan's recovery is to receive
steroids (dexamethazone). This is the same drug that Laura was given
two days before Nathan was born, just in case he was born too early,
and everyone said it made a big difference to his survival. The
steroids will have the same effect as they had then, to speed the
growth of his lungs.
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