Thank you to all of you for your prayers. Kellen continues to do amazingly well. The newest change for him is that he is weaning out of his isolette. That means he is doing well regulating his temperature and doesn't need the isolette to help him. So far, he has done well all day long and hopefully, will get to be in a normal basinett/crib soon. He also is on no medications other than a multivitamin. Basically, the only reason he is in the NICU is to help him figure out how to eat and gain weight. He continues to gain weight well and is 4 lbs 3 oz, but needs a little help getting all his food into his belly. But that is very well considering his gestational age and size.
Carson continues to beat the odds. He is doing well, but had a little setback with his ventilation and his lungs. This morning, his chest x-ray looked quite a bit more hazy than in the past. That means he has more fluid on his lungs. They believe it might be because he is mobilizing a lot of the edema/swelling that was in his soft tissue into his bloodstream and some of it is going into his lungs. As a result, he is up on his ventilator pressures to 28 rather than 24 where he was. This is more pressure than they would like, but feel they will be able to wean eventually. He also had a mild amount of pulmonary hypertension so he is getting nitric oxide for that to dilate those vessels in the lungs. They will check another chest x-ray next morning and continue his diuretics to try to help with this. Dr. Ali does not seem extremely concerned at this point. All of Carson's blood cultures looking for infection have come back negative and that is a HUGE praise!!! He is off antibiotics except for fluconazole prophylactically. He is weaning on his dopamine which helps his blood pressure and is at 3. Once he gets off that, he gets to start getting some food. Dr. Ali said after he gets to 2 then essentially you can wean at that point so he is very close. Hopefully, in the next day or 2 they will begin feeding small amounts. Carson also is going down on his pain medication and off the sedative so we get to see him move more : ). It is so much fun to see him move his eyes and mouth. He is amazing. They also are giving him some more blood because his hemoglobin is low and that might also be why he is having more trouble with ventilation. So overall, he is doing well, just a few things to get stabilized. And for those interested, his weight is sitting at 5 lbs 2.4 oz.
They will also do a CTScan of his chest at some point in the future to make sure there are no signs of any metastasis from his teratoma in his lungs. The oncologists do not feel this is likely but want to make sure they check to be sure.
Prayers:
Carson needs to keep peeing off the extra fluid
For the fluid to leave his lungs, so he can ventilate better and go down on his ventilator pressures
For no signs of pulmonary hypertension on his next echocardiogram
For no signs of any metastasis on the CTScan
Continued healing for both boys and Liz
For Kellen to keep gaining more strength to be able to eat
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