Friday, December 24, 2004

It's a quiet Christmas Eve here in the NICU, and Will is making the most of it by sleeping most of the day. He's doing pretty well despite the fact that they drained another 25cc of fluid from around his lung today. The good spin to put on things is that each time they do drain that off, his stats jump back up and he seems very comfortable. That would seem to indicate that he's in a pretty good place with his lungs, and, if not for the fluid around them, he would probably be back to where he was a couple of weeks ago during what we've taken to calling "the great week." The fluid seems to be more an inconvenience than a significant hurdle, though it obviously is something they'd rather not have him confront for too long. Because they've been taking so much fluid out of him, they now are giving him more in the form of saline and albumin. His blood pressure has been low, and this will help to stabilize that, as well as to keep fluid from leaking into his tissues. So, while it seems odd to give a kid with too much fluid in his tissues still more fluid in the hope of correcting that, it will help because it is the right kind of fluid. They've said several times that it's possible for him to be considerably bloated and still be dehydrated because the fluid isn't in the right place. Yet another reminder of how complex a system the body is, and how self-correcting it can be if you're not 32 weeks old gestationally.

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