Will is doing better tonight as the doctors work to find what makes his lungs work the best. They've said many times that all he really needs to do for himself is pee (and they'll even give him drugs to help with that); everything else they can control. Such is the case with his lungs. By tweaking the pressures on his ventilator, moving him around in his bed and raising or lowering the amount of oxygen he receives, they can keep things working pretty well.

That said, I should learn to not use words like "collapse" when talking about his condition. Yes, a portion of his lung had collapsed today, but that's kind of misleading. Much as I've said when referring people to other pages that discuss medicines or conditions that are really more geared toward adults, don't affix the same importance to these things that you would in an adult. Lung collapse in an adult is bad. But for Will, a portion of his lungs is always collapsed because they are still so immature that they don't fully inflate. So, if a portion of his lung isn't open, it's collapsed. Today, a part that had been working well just wasn't working so well. It will reopen again as they alter the way they treat his lungs. At one point, his doctors talked about renal failure. Again, a big deal for an adult, but not uncommon for Will. They just meant his kidneys weren't working particularly well that day. Translation: He needed to pee. They gave him a diuretic and he did. They describe things in medical terms, and we've been there long enough that we've started to talk that way too because it's easier to figure out what's going on with him when we speak the doctor's language.

So, we're kind of back to where we were just before the recent string of good days. He's having some trouble that is very manageable, and they're getting him back on track. We'll find out tomorrow if the fluid around his lung is reaccumulating, and they'll adjust his treatment accordingly.