Time flies when things are going good

I can't believe it has been 2 weeks since I blogged. So here is what is going on. Ryan is doing great. He weighs 5 lbs 7 ozs as of last night. He is still on oxygen and they are predicting that he will go home on oxygen. The good news is the nurses have started talking about him going home. He isn't quite there yet, I think another week or 2 but close! He is bottle feeding all that he can tolerate. That means when he gets tired and won't take a bottle they put it down his feeding tube. They just started letting him try taking a bottle every feeding yesterday and he has been tired. Hopefully today will be better. I don't agree with the hospitals policy of feeding every 3 hours day and night as it seems to make him tired and he doesn't get an extended period of rest but I can't change it.

Ryan is on low flow oxygen and we all think he will go home on oxygen, that seems to be common because of our altitude. They have started changing his protocol's though. He was getting specific vitamins that he was lacking as well as iron. Yesterday they changed it to multivitamins with iron that he could go home on. They reduced the calories they were adding to his milk from 24 to 22, it doesn't seem like much or a big deal but they won't send him home on fortified milk and the next step down is straight breast milk so that is in anticipation of him going home. They took him off Lasix as well, they won't send him home on Lasix but they could send him home on another diuretic if he continued to have fluid in his lungs. (Incase you are saying what is Lasix or diuretics they are drugs that help remove fluids from your body, so if you have swelling of your body or fluid in your lungs or heart that is what they give you to reduce it.)

Taking him off the Lasix could cause him to fail on his oxygen (fail meaning he would have to go back on high flow). If it does then they know he needs that drug for now and they can prescribe something he can take at home. It could delay his stay a little while they get his lungs back to where they need to be but it should be just a few days. In all reality if he got the feeding thing down and doesn't fail on his oxygen in the next few days, then they will keep him for a few more days to make sure he doesn't stop eating or have other issues and then he is ready to go him. Best case senario is he will be him next weekend. Of course it is all just speculation and could change at a moments notice. I am just excited we are finally to this point.