Doctor Explains It

Hunter's Weight: 5 lbs, 4 oz.

Today I was able to talk to Doctor and he explained everything that happened and why he chose to put Hunter back on CPAP. Here's what he said.

The night before he was returned to CPAP the nurse had reported that he was breathing hard. Then the following day he didn't show any interest in eating. When they would try to feed him he would spit it up. Nurse told his doctor about this and they decided to put him on CPAP. At the same time, Doctor ordered an x-ray of his chest. After looking at the x-ray they found that his lungs were cloudy again (like pneumonia) so Doctor did a blood test to make sure everything was okay. The blood test showed no infection (whew, thats a relief) and they figure that he is doing the "silent reflux" i wrote about a while ago where he spits up and then inhales it into his lungs. All of that liquid can collapse parts of his lungs so the CPAP just helps keep his lungs open until they can remedy the situation.

Doctor said they are going to do some fancy tests to determine how coordinated his throat is and decide how severe his reflux is. A difficult part of this test is that he has to be able to eat from a bottle to do the test. But he cannot take a botle while on CPAP. But the CPAP is what is keeping this from getting worse. It's a difficult circle, I'm just glad I'm not a doctor who has to figure all of this out.