Thursday, September 20, 2007

Losing accessories....

Great news...Mason's pulmonary appointment went well yesterday. He weighed in at 9lbs 3oz. This was an increase of 6 oz in 5 days! He also had a 1 hour trial off of oxygen and did great. His average oxygen sat was 98%. Since he did so well, he is now allowed to spend his awake time off of oxygen (as long as we check him periodically). He will sleep, nap and feed with his oxygen on until the next visit. The docs also said his chest x-ray was an improvement over the one he had 4 weeks ago. His lungs are growing and making steady progress! He is still breathing faster than normal and was taking about 60 breaths per minute at our visit. A normal baby consistently breathes under 60 breaths per minute. We are still over the normal range, but a huge improvement over status when we left the NICU (he used to breathe around 80 per minutes). Keeping the oxygen on for a month really made a difference!

The pulmonary docs also made some medication modifications. He is going to go up slightly on his diuretics to make sure his lungs don't get "wet". This will hopefully be the last time we go up and he will eventually grow out of this dose. He is also going to get Prilosec to try and treat his reflux and hopefully make him more comfortable. Prilosec and Zantac will work together for 1 month and then we will stop the Zantac. We are now up to 10 medications. Hopefully this number will start to go the other way soon :)

We were able to remove his nasal cannula and for the very first time, we could see half of his entire face with no tubes. I must say that he is a very handsome boy :) His only tube now is his NJ feeding tube.

Tomorrow we will have an upper GI to evaluate his reflux and to see if we can move forward to an NG tube and eventually bolus feeds.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good morning to all,

Again, you bring us good news!

Mason is doing so well under the assistance of a great Mom and Dad.

True, there is a lot of time at those points - and the funny thing, you really don't feel like starting a project, or trying to finish one. But then, when he is a teenager, coming home "late" in the evening, the same thing happens.

Keep up the good work, and we love hearing of the progress.

Hugs to all,
An Alcona Friend

The 311 Boys Mom said...

Great News!!! Parker thinks he's a little doll (literally). I generally ready you at work, btu I open it at home 2 or 3 times a week to show SHane & the boys.

Parker would like us to get him one. Cause boys can have boy dolls. :)

He didn't even notice (or think it was different) the tubes & what not.

He's told me this at least 4 times now.

We're so happy things are moving along in the right direction!