8:30pm:  This has, by far, been one of Reid's better days this past week and they have been working on weaning Reid off of the Nitric Oxide.  Yesterday, he was on 20 ppm (which is the max), and is currently at 4.8 ppm.  They probably won't wean him all the way tonight and will probably wait until tomorrow when the doctors are around (assuming he is ready for it).  They were also able to wean his breaths per minute down to 30 (down from the mid-40s yesterday).  The collapsed portion of his lung seems to be back to normal again (I guess as normal as normal can get for having chronic lung disease)

From a medicine standpoint, they got Reid off of the Dopamine (blood pressure medicine) and have put him on hydrocortisone (steroid) to further help his lung development.  They have also added an antibiotic and are culturing his blood and some mucus that was removed during one of his CPT treatments.  I believe his blood was sent off 2 or 3 days ago and hasn't returned anything yet, but the mucus that was sent out yesterday has returned a gram negative rod bacteria.  Seems like he has had these all too many times, so they will probably continue with a 7-10 day regiment of antibiotic.  Premature babies just don't have the immune system that they need to ward off infection.  This very well could have been what caused Reid to take a turn for the worse the other day.

And the best news of the day ---- Reid had an ECHO this morning that showed that his pulmonary hypertension has gone away.  Now, this doesn't mean that it won't come back, but this is still great news.  With that gone, they have been able to reduce his oxygen saturation limits to be between 88 and 92.  However, with all of the weaning today, he has still been hovering in the 93-95 range at 100% oxygen.  When the nitric has been removed, they will start the weaning on the O2 levels.

We met with a new doctor today (Dr. Cornish) who is covering for Dr. Moore over the weekend.  It was a very informative chat and he probably sat down for 20-30 minutes with us.  He walked us over his xrays, drew diagrams (explaining pulmonary hypertension and chronic lung disease) and talked about some of the things that we, as parents, will endure along the way.  Dr. Cornish has a son with Down Syndrome that was born prematurely and had two holes in his heart.  He was quick to point out that he knew what it was like to be a parent going through this rollercoaster of a ride so he was able to come down to our level with some of the emotional side effects that come along with the territory.  I could go on and on with what we learned from him today, but I will sign off tonight with a lesson that he said we need to remember (which is probably heavily paraphrased):  "Don't take the highs to high and don't take the lows too low.  Doctors give you good news that can change at any second and can give you grim news that may not turn out to be all too bad.  You are in this for the long haul and need to focus on Reid getting better and keep stable and positive outlook."

10:00am:  Reid had marginal progress last night.  They were able to wean him down to 95% O2 and when they got his breaths per minute (BPM) down to 37, he starting sat'ing in the lower 90s.  Their goal is to have his saturations stay around the 95 mark, so they ended up pushing his O2 back up to 100%.  I have to keep reminding myself that the lowering of the BPM is a really good thing though.  When it is all said and done, the BPM is one of the key points that decides when he is extubated.  After surgery, they will extubate when they can remove the paralytic and get the vent to only giving about 15 assisted BPM (in addition to whatever Reid is doing on his own).  Progress is progress... regardless of how big or small.  The key thing is that we are moving in the right direction.