Wednesday, September 30, 2009

One Breath at a Time

That's how we're taking it these days. Last night Alex managed to keep his temperature down, and his oxygen saturation improved bit by bit. Today his temp was still around 99 until about 5 when it started to come up again. Could just be his body fighting the inflammation; we don't yet know if the fluid in his lungs is growing any "bugs". (That's the term the doctors use, really!)

They were able to adjust the pressure setting and the oxygen flow setting on his ventilator today, lowering them as he became better able to oxygenate his blood. Will see what things look like tomorrow morning... it's a roller coaster.

This morning's xray showed less fluid in both lungs than what they found yesterday. This is great news and we hope that trend continues!

His heart, kidneys, liver, and digestive system all continue to function well, thank heavens. If we can put this pneumonia in its place, we can get the trach tube in; if we get the trach tube in, we can start to wake him up and wean him off the ventilator; once that happens, he can get up and walk and finally get well. They say once they get up, patients improve immeasurably.

Looking forward to that day...

4 comments:

Linda Starr said...

With all on your plate you're keeping everyone up to date, thanks for that. I'm wishing Alex a quick improvement so he can get up and walk around and you can breathe a sigh of relief.

Elizabeth said...

Thank you so much for keeping us in the loop on Alex's health. You are very much in our thoughts!

MOM said...

Our thoughts and prayers are with him.
Allen & Beverly Souza

Alex Solla said...

Thank you, everyone! We are so grateful for all the thoughts and prayers that people are giving us. It helps so much.

-Nancy