9:15am: Reid had a pretty quiet night -- so quiet that he slept from 9:30p to 5am this morning. With the change in orders, Reid is getting "touched" much less and is able to get some good sleep. He had another good CO2 last night -- 57! There will not be any changes this weekend as our doctor will be out until Monday and she wrote orders for nothing to change (regardless of how well he may be doing).

Talking to the doctor yesterday afternoon, she said that if Reid can keep up his manageable gasses, they will try to wean the pressures two times a week. She also mentioned that if they can get him down to about 5 liters (he is at 13 now), they will probably intubate him and perform the surgeries: bilateral inguinal hernia repair, nissen fundoplication and insertion of a gastric feeding tube (g-tube). And when he has recovered, try quickly to get him back off the vent. I think they feel that if they can get to a more manageable pressure on the high flow, Reid will have stabilized and will handle the intubation much easier.

Doctors are slightly concerned with his weight gain -- or lack there of. He had lost a little bit a few days back and think this is from him burning calories to breathe. They have increased his feeds to 24cc per hour and are fortifying it to 26 calorie (breast milk is naturally 20 calorie) to pack more "punch" without giving him too many fluids. In addition to the extra calories, the fortification gives him other essential nutrients like calcium (which is needed for his bones since he has been on steroids for such a long time).

Not much going on for the Elley family today. The snow is still around and the roads look worse than they did last night. My parents were supposed to come back today from the Cayman Islands and just looked on the web and saw that their flight into Atlanta at 5pm tonight was already cancelled. Sucks to be trapped in paradise, right?!?