10:30pm: Down to 62% O2!!! This little stinker is giving his father a heart attack.

Reid is officially a drug addict and has developed a strong resistance to the morphine and nurcuron. Not only is he on a drip of these two drugs, but he also gets the chloralhydrate at night so that he sleeps for at least 6 hours. Tonight, shortly after touch times when he was given the chloralhydrate, he was smacking/sucking on his ET tube and waiving his hand in the air. Between these three drugs, he should be **gone**. The nurse decided to give him an extra bolus of morphine and nurcuron and no more than 10 minutes later, he is doing the exact same thing. After talking with the nurse practitioner, they gave him yet another dose of both drugs.... and he is finally out for the count. Hope he doesn't expect mom and dad to hook him up with the drugs when he comes home. :) I don't like the fact that he is on so many medications, but if it is what it takes to get this guy home to us, so be it.

5:30pm: Down to 82% O2. Doctors think this is Chronic Lung Disease at it's finest... an up and down roller coaster.

2:45pm: I don't have a lot of news as I am catching it all second hand from a very brief conversation with Kristen (she is teaching today and I have been in back to back meetings), but Reid's O2 is back down to 88 and his BPM to 24. Recent blood gas test back well. Lowered his feedings to 12cc per hour to help keep him "dry".

I did some reading this morning about Gastroesophageal Reflux in Premature Infants as this is something that the doctor is keeping a watchful eye on. He is concerned that his feedings are causing aspirations into his lungs when he refluxes... and if you read the article, it shows that this can lead to respiratory infections. This is something that I want to further discuss with Dr. Piazza next time I see him as we are starting to see a trend (not sure if it is related) that when Reid starts feeling better, he resumes his feedings, and then the vicious cycle starts all over again. Hmmm...

5:30am: They have changed Reid's position to be on his stomach and his sats have come up marginally to the 93 to 95 range. They have also repositioned his ET tube and moved it slightly down 1.5cm to see if that would help but is only sat'ing 95.

Feeds are going to continue as the hyperal/iv fluids tend to make babies retain more fluids which could impact his lungs. The bowel sounds are still present so they are fairly confident that he is still moving his food along well.

If Reid doesn't make any changes in the next couple of hours, they are going to switch over from the vent to the high frequency (oscillator) -- which was something that they had talked about yesterday in our meeting. This machine, while not pretty, can actually remove some of the stress that the vent puts on the lungs by mechanically inflating and deflating the lungs.

I am heading to the airport now and wish I wasn't going, but if need be, I can always change my flight and come back early. It is only a 1.5 hr flight and can be back fairly quick.

4:30am: Still at 100% oxygen since last night's touch time and has been hovering in the 89 to 92% saturation range. They have done chest and stomach xrays and don't see anything different than what they saw in yesterday's xrays.

They were able to suction about 8cc of milky fluid out of his stomach which appeared to be a mixture of medicine and partially digested milk. Since he is being fed into his intestine and not his stomach, this shows that his bowel had refluxed some of the milk. They aren't sure if they are going to stop feeds yet.