Today's update (so far)

All day yesterday was spent turning down the ECMO pump--that's different than the oxygen on ECMO. They wanted to get the pump down to about 200 before attempting to wean Drew off of the oxygen. Weaning off of the pump means that his heart is having to do more and more work (I think that I have that straight anyway).

We saw him this morning around 8:00 a.m. and the pump was down to 180-200; they had just given blood products and that messes with the levels of the pump until they pull the excess products off with the hemafilter so that's why there's a range instead of an exact number. Two days ago, the pump was at 750 so he's come a tremendous way already.

They had started to drop his oxygen also, it was down to 80% and he was mainitaining all of his numbers. The plan is to drop the oxygen level by 10% an hour until it gets to 50% and then they're going to just let him chill for a while. It's a lot of work for his body to take over. Remember, he needs to get down to 21% oxygen on ECMO before the medical people are comfortable that he's doing basically everything himself.

It's confusing but he has 2 oxygen levels--one for his vent and the one on the ECMO pump. His vent is currently at 40% and the ECMO oxygen level is the one being lowered right now. Is that as clear as mud?!

He's fighting so hard, please continue to keep him in your thoughts and prayers. It looks as though he WILL be having surgery at some point this week, either on or off of ECMO. We don't know exactly when but his surgeon feels that it really needs to be done soon.

I saw my doctor today for an incision check. Everything is good on that front, just still very sore. *Sigh* It looks as if Elizabeth is sick now too.

Update at noon: His oxygen is at 50% and has been for a little while. The nurses are just waiting to hear back from the surgeons on how to proceed from here. All of his numbers have been staying in the very good range and they were just doing another blood gas but those have been consistently good.