Extubate??

The doctors have ordered to stop James' feeds at 4am with the hope of extubating him sometime tomorrow morning.

Over the last two days they have slowly been decreasing the ventilator settings and by the end of today he was almost at the levels needed to be extubated. His blood gas levels showed that he is doing well on these settings and so they're hoping to be able to extubate tomorrow.

We have no idea what type of oxygen support James will need once the ventilator is removed. He could go back to nasal prongs or he may need BiPAP or C-PAP (these provide air pressure to the lungs helping to get more air in and out of the lungs), or there's a possibility that they'll have to intubate him again ... we won't know until we try.

This is so exciting, but at the same time we know not to put our trust in "plans" as James' likes to throw loops in the doctors plans and we end up even more disappointed in the end. It will be
so nice to hear his voice again, to give him that water he's been asking to drink for two weeks now, but most of all to pick him up and hug him.

We have cannot say for sure whether the MethylPrednisolone had anything to do with the fact that they've been able to wean James. Before the lung biopsy James' was getting close to extubation, so it's possible that he just recuperated from the lung biopsy and was able to slowly be weaned. It is more likely that it was a combination of the two, healing from the biopsy and reducing some of the inflammation with the MethylPrednisolone. Whatever the case, the last couple days have been more positive.

They continue to slowly wean down the morphine James is on. Today his chest drain tube came out and seeing as we didn't hear anything back about the x-ray we'll assume all looks well in that area also. Results from Immunology came back today as well. They have looked at his B Cells and T Cells, which are white cells that create antibiodies to fight infection. It seems that they are a bit slow at reacting, but they are working fine. So there is not any real concern here, but they would like to follow up again when he is "healthier" to see how he does then. Other then that our last few days have been quiet as we just wait for the slow ventilator weaning process to take place.

If all goes well tomorrow will also be an exciting day because Matthew is coming to visit for a couple days. We haven't seen Matthew for over two weeks now so we are very excited to spend some time with our little guy.