TUESDAY UPDATE

I'll be so glad when I can blog about something different than PICU's, blood gases, intubation strategies, etc. But for now, yep, this is our life. So here's the latest. Colby was able to sleep last night pretty much through the night. Of course they wake him up every 3 hours to do a cough treatment but he was able to go back to sleep fairly easily. Mom stayed in the room and I got a sleep room last night. I slept a whole 6 hours, which while in the hospital is pretty darn amazing. Colby's blood pressure still is a little too high. We're questioning what this could be. The best thing we could come up with in rounds this morning is stress/anxiety. Really hard to tell. It's not off the charts so I'm not totally freaking out, just half. Just one more thing to keep an eye on for the next few days.

So the docs were thinking extubation today and I was thinking tomorrow. After seeing Colby's blood work from overnight, the docs did not want to extubate today either. Colby's white cell count is up a little so we're going to keep an eye on him and reevaluate in the morning. Also, there's this cool new test they can do to determine whether or not Colby is getting a bacterial infection. Don't have the name of it in front of me. Begins with a P, some really long, strange word. But anyway, this substance, whatever it's called, is in everyone's body. They don't seem to know the function of it. HOWEVER, based on research by a PICU doctor here at Cincy, it has been determined that when this P-something level rises, the patient will get a bacterial infection. The more the P-something rises, the worse off the infection is going to be. So it's like a precursor to help figure out what's going on with infection. And it doesn't work on viral infections, only bacterial. Pretty damn fascinating if you ask me. To think a doc here at Cincy in the PICU, Colby's attending last week as a matter of fact, discovered this tool makes me love this hospital even more. Colby still doesn't have a fever and his x-ray this morning still looked good. He is holding a TON of fluids though. He was positive 1 liter of fluid for the day yesterday. He is peeing, just not peeing near enough. Guess I'll have to get in touch with my inner Pee Whisperer and see what we can do for the boy.

That sums it up. Dad is here with me now. When I left to walk Mom to the parking garage Colby had just gotten done with occupational therapy and was getting his 12:00 cough treatment. I snuggled up in bed with him for a bit today. Not an easy task moving around vent tube, feeding tube, leads, IVs, etc. But we managed. If you ask me, it was the best medicine Colby could get, a little TLC. It sure did wonders for my overall well being. More later. THANKS everyone for the continued prayers and support. Colby WILL beat this stupid pneumonia and we WILL get home just as soon as we can.