Good changes, bad gas

What do we say about today?  We got a call this morning from the hospital (rarely a completely positive thing).  Greyson’s nurse wanted to let us know of some changes that were made to his care plan.  Basically Greyson’s blood gas numbers had come back bad.  His CO2 was in the 70’s so they had changed his vent settings to try to get them back in line.  Well they ran another gas and his numbers were even worse (86).  His vent settings were now at the highest rate they could go and they also turned up the volume.

Also this morning Greyson’s nurse (who has had him for several days including last week) talked to the Dr. and expressed her (our) concerns that he was looking very puffy and his stomach continued to be full and extended even thoug it remained mostly soft.  Well the Dr. heard her and ordered his feeding to be stopped for one hour to allow him a break in digesting the continuous feeds.  He also reduced Greyson’s feed rate to 8.5 ml an hour from 9.5.  He did add more calories to the breastmilk so basically Greyson is getting the same calories, just in less volume. 

So Stacy and I decided to go to the hospital just to be there as we figured out what was going on.  His noon gas came back and his CO2 was 65 (not to bad of a gas).  He still looked a little puffy but overal was looking pretty good today.  We talked to the Dr. and the plan right now is to keep his feeding rate at this lower volume and put Greyson on a regiment of lasics (the diretic) in an attempt to “dry him out”.  We were very pleased with this as we have felt that this could be the problem since last week.  So we will wait and see how this changes things.  HIs weight didn’t change much, which is good (the Dr., Stacy, and I would all like to see him lose some weight since he has gained more than is reasonable).  He is weighing over 3 pounds but some of that is definately fluid weight.  Hopefully this will get him back to normal and he can progress again.

We were also so thankful that at the 4pm care time Greyson decided to wake up and look at us.  He really hasn’t been very alert for the last few days and it was great to see his eyes and have him interact with us.  While Stacy cleaned off his face she continued to touch his tongue and lips with the q-tip.  It was hilarious to watch him scrunch his eyes up like “hey, what in the world is this?”.   

Well that’s about it.  We will wait and see what his midnight blood gas is and from that they will determine if they will make any changes to the vent.  Hopefully he can at least get back down to a rate of 50 so that he will not be maxed out on the vent.