For now, the chest tube seems to have been a good idea. Will was stable all night, and his oxygen needs barely fluctuated in the past 24 hours, and they have been able to decrease his ventilator setting significantly as well. It seems that getting the fluid out of there was the right call, now they need to find a way to stop the flow all together. To that end, they increased the octreotide dose today, and hope that this might ease things a bit. He is losing less -- they took off more than 70cc of fluid in the past 24 hours (as of about 11 this morning) but only 8cc in the last eight hours of that day. Maybe the nitric oxide increase helped.

A physical therapist visited this morning and showed me a few things I can do to help Will with his range of motion. They are little things like helping him to bend and flex his arms and legs. The therapist also is working on other things that require a bit more skill that should help Will to feel better and be more active once get slims down again. We don't get many opportunities to do hands-on parenting, so I welcomed the chance to help him out. Mary and I will be able to do this for him a couple of times a day now.

And what would an update be without a little input about Will's output? Let's just say that he had some spectacular diapers overnight and into today, and that should help him to slim down. He did gain again today, but only 12 grams, so it seems like they're getting him turned around and headed in the right direction.