Back on the Oscillator

Happy Hunter's First Christmas.

Hunter is having a hard day on his first Christmas. Hunter's doctors give us an update once a day, either personally if we're in the NICU or by phone if we're not. Today we are running behind schedule and they must have thought we weren't going to make it in so his doctor called with the update today.

Hunter is not having a happy first Christmas. Overnight they measured the gases in his blood and found that the CO2 is too high. I don't understand how this happens, what the consequences are, or what causes it. I guess it's good that I'm not his doctor :)

Because of his high CO2 they had to move him backwards onto a more dependent breathing machine, the very intimidating oscillator. This machine looks like something you would find in Dr. Frankenstein's lab and it makes his little chest flitter as it pumps air in and out very fast. Dr. Big Words says that it's very likely that this is being caused by a case of pneumonia, which we already knew was very possible but were hoping would not happen. He's scheduled to receive an X-Ray shortly to diagnose it, and will continue to receive X-Rays every 12 hours until he's better. In the mean time they're going to be giving him antibiotics for likely the next seven days to fight any lung infections.

Good news, they're still feeding him milk.

Merry Christmas