I called the NICU about 6:30 this morning to see how Tyler was. He is responding very well to the chest tube. His blood pressure is in the normal range again. They were able to lower the ventilator pressure while keeping the oxygen saturation level down. This means the ventilator isn't pushing his lungs as hard. The oxygen saturation level is the amount of oxygen in his blood. At this age, they typically have to use high concentrations of oxygen with high ventilator pressure to stabilize the oxygen level into the normal range. The significance of having the pressure of the ventilator decreased and not having to crank up the oxygen saturation for Tyler is his lungs are working more efficiently at grabbing the oxygen without it be hammered into his lungs. All good things to hear. The chest tube is still showing signs that his lung is leaking air into his chest but it's doing its job at releasing this air. One of the first indications that the lung is healed over is the chest tube no long shows air bubbles releasing. I will hear more about this when I get up there today.
And on that subject, the doctors here are waiting to see what my white blood count has done since Friday before they decide how I'm leaving today. I'm not sure if I'm being straight transferred back to Dartmouth or if I'll be discharge here and use Dartmouth as an out patient for a couple of days. Either way I have to make the tough journey back up to Dartmouth and leave my beautiful daughter in loving hands of her grandparents a little longer. I have no idea how we do this without all the support from both of our families.
One of us will try to post something later if events allow.
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