10:45pm: Reid had a very busy day today and the poor little man was beat! His IV appeared to be hurting him, he had been stuck for his lab work this morning and he was not a happy camper. As soon as his blood transfusion was complete, Kristen and I quickly asked if the IV could be removed out of his foot. They typically don't like pulling them if they don't need to - but in this case, since Reid didn't really have a need for the IV anymore and with the thought that it was hurting him, they went ahead and pulled it.

He was on such edge tonight that we didn't even give him a proper bath. We wiped him down with baby wipes, cleaned his g-tube site (which is not looking pretty these days), got him weighed, dressed him --- and all of this was done with him being half asleep. We had given him some chloral hydrate tonight to help calm him down, and he was OUT!

Tonight, he weighed 6.88 kg or 15.17 lbs.

We hope he has a good night's sleep tonight and is well rested for tomorrow. We maybe got one or two smiles out of him tonight and was mostly a stressful visit, so we will be ready for normal Reid tomorrow (if its possible).



3:10pm: Reid's IV stick went well and they were able to get a suitable vein on the second attempt. Knowing in the past that this has taken upwards of 9 or 10 times, this is a nice sigh of relief for mom and dad! They also took another CO2 and it was 50.6! The blood just arrived to his room and he will be getting 100cc over a 4 hr period. O2 is still at 60%.

12:00pm: I commented to Kristen last night about how the drive to the hospital every day puts me in such a bad mood. So today while I was thinking about it, I ran a few calculation for some interesting statistics. To date, this journey through the the NICU has lasted 231 days and can be converted into the following units:

• 19,958,400 seconds
• 332,640 minutes
• 5544 hours
• 231 days
• 33 weeks
• 7.63 months

Driving back and forth between the hospital and home has put on about 8,000 miles to our cars. Driving that many miles has also consumed a good part of our lives; in fact, it can be equated to roughly:

• 15,720 minutes
• 262 hours
• 10.9 days

So, who ever said that parenting was a full-time job... they were 100% correct!

11:15am: Just got a call from health care company that will be providing the at-home nursing for Reid when he comes home. The process has started and we need to sign the paperwork they are faxing to the hospital today. As each day goes by, even with a minor set back this past week, we are getting closer and closer to him coming home.

No more than two minutes after the call from the health care company, the hospital called to tell us that Reid will be getting another blood transfusion as his hematocrit levels have been slowly dropping since his surgery. I don't know if this is due to them drawing blood all the time for his CO2 tests and recent Cortisol labs, but he has gone from 38.1 pre-surgery to 35 and down to 31.6 today. That number represents the percentage of blood volume that is occupied by red blood cells (males should have a level between 39 and 50). And going back to your biology classes in school, red blood cells are the mechanism as to how the body delivers oxygen to the tissues. So, in this case, the more red blood cell Reid has, the easier it is for him to oxygenate. We hate seeing Reid with IVs, but if it helps him out, we just have to deal with it...

Also, over the past few days, they have been running some cortisol tests to see how they can wean Reid's hydrocortisone dose. After the tests, it appears that Reid's body isn't producing enough of it on his own yet, so they are actually going to make a slight increase. Instead of getting the .25mL every 12 hours, they are going to go back to every 8 hours.

I didn't get a chance to blog last night, but Kristen and I had a good visit with him yesterday. He seemed to be in a much better mood than he has been over the past several and didn't cry a single time we were there (which he seemed to have been doing at the drop of a hat previously). We even gave him his bath without a single peep out of him - he seemed to enjoy it and was all smiles.

His Oxygen has come down a bit further today to 60%, but would imagine with the IV they are giving him this morning that it will go up again. Nonetheless, he is still making some progress as compared to the past 5 days.