The Plan

I was able to talk to Doctor yesterday and we went over what the short-term plan is for Hunter. When I say short-term it's not really that short, it could be about a month. Although Hunter is doing very well and has noticable improvements he is still going pretty slow.

He has been gaining weight again, as of last night he was all the way up to 8 lbs 7.5 oz, nearly six pounds over his birth weight.

Back to the plan. There are two major problems keeping Hunter in the hospital - his lungs and his reflux. It sounds like they can only treat one at a time, and only if the other gets better on it's own. If Hunter's reflux gets better then they can send him home with oxygen, or if his lungs get better he can have the G tube surgery and then come home after that. The problem is that they can't do both. Hunter's lungs are too damaged to safely do the G tube surgery, it would be dangerous to use anesthetics on him and he would have to go back on a ventilator which would be no good for his lungs.

The current plan is to wait about two weeks and let him continue to improve. The goal is to get him down to 1 liter of oxygen before he comes home, 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 would be better though. After the two weeks they will do another swallow study to determine if his reflux is improving. The results of that test will help determine what the next and hopefully final step of his long hospital journey will be.