7:00pm: Reid is continuing to get the boluses of nurcuron about every 3 hours or so, right when he starts to get cranky. This really seems to help him keep his sat's up, but he remains at 100% oxygen. After a recent blood gas test, they reduced his BPM from 46 to 44. Since he isn't being paralyzed 100% of the time, they are continuing to feed him his 16cc of milk per hour.

Dr. Metcalf and I exchanged emails today and I think he put this in a good perspective: "One of the issues we run into with older babies like Reid is that they are not happy being on the vent. It's a fine line between enough and too much sedation. He needs to be awake somewhat to allow his brain to be stimulated, but he requires a lot more oxygen when he's irritated. The fact that his brain is normal (a very good thing!) hinders him to an extent since he would rather be chomping on a pacie (or mom) rather than an ET tube. I truly wish I had an answer. In my experience, the fix is related more to time (and prayers) than anything we can do medically. Steroids and good ventilator management help, but usually supplement the time component."

Time is going to continue to march on... so keep those prayers coming. He needs every bit of help he can get!

** Dr. Metcalf --- I hope you don't mind me quoting you. :)

1:40pm: Reid had a worse night last night than he has had in a while. His oxygen requirements are at 100% and at times struggles to keep his saturations up. Over night, they had to use the bag to get his saturations up as they had dropped down into the 30s and 40s. The frustrating part of this is it appears that some of reason for this is Reid resisting the machines. I think he is old enough to know what is going on and, being a baby, will do what he wants to do.

They started giving boluses of nurcuron again today as that really seems to help and prevents him from fighting the vent. The problem with that is it only seems to work thirty minutes at a time.

Tomorrow, Reid will have another ECHO and a visit from the pulmonologist. Dr. Piazza seems to think that his levels of pulmonary hypertension have risen and this may be part of it as well. If this is the case, the nitric oxide may be used again. Also, there is some room for an increase in the sildenafil, which he increased today and another set of drugs as well.

So, we are anxiously awaiting the visits from the various doctors tomorrow. In the mean time, we will sit here in Reid's room in a ball of stress. Even the mind-numbing games on the iPhone don't seem to do their job anymore.