Day 55. Max doing OK, but not brilliant. He was good overnight and yesterday, so they’ve changed some ventilation parameters – now he’s on SIPPV (I think I’ve got that right). This means whenever he takes a breath, the ventilator fills him up to a set level. He is occasionally taking a series of breaths, then stops for a while – which is when the ventilator kicks in.
We went back in the afternoon – he’s still reasonably good. He had a very good blood gas, so they’ve again changed the ventilation parameters to try and trigger the brain to take more breaths spontaneously. Apparently if the CO2 levels are low, the brain doesn’t think it needs to breathe, but if the levels are higher, it may be stimulated to take a breath and so oxygenate the blood.
His stoma output was very watery today – we were assured that this was OK, but they had a liver ultrasound to check there wasn’t a problem in that area. OK results. So, feed additives are again altered to try and help. Prems do change day to day with excretions, so we’re told. He’s now on 7ml by mouth (lactose-free formula plus fortification and additives) and only about 1ml per hour of PN through his central line.
His hair is growing nicely, though there is still a bit of a bald patch where they had shaved to try and put IVs in. There are some little curls at the back. His feet look really big as well – well in relation to the rest of him! They also took the final dressing off his chest wound – it’s healing very nicely.
Weight now 1220 – up 70g over 2 days. Yay Max!
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