No better

In fact, Drew's doing worse as of this morning. :(

His urine output has basically stopped and his BUN is 112. A normal BUN is 3-5. BUN stands for blood urea nitrogen and indicates impaired kidney function. From WebMD: measures the amount of nitrogen in your blood that comes from the waste product urea. As a result, his swelling is getting worse.

His blood pressure is bad and they have had to restart the dopamine. This is a pretty major step backwards.

His blood gasses are getting a bit worse so they have had to turn the amplitude on the oscillator up--from 39 to 43. I *think* I have this right: the amplitude indicates how many breaths per minute Drew's getting so he went from 390 bpm to 430 bpm. This time aound on the oscillator, he was started at an amplitude of 55 (90 prior to ECMO).

Dr. M., the surgeon, wants to talk to us at some point today according to Drew's nurse. Make of that what you will; we haven't seen him in a few days (no real set times for rounds) so it's probably that combined with Drew's decline.

His WBC is elevated today, moreso than yesterday. His cultures still haven't grown any infection and probably won't; they've been incubating long enough that any infection should have shown up by now.

If I sound down, it's because I am. I'm basically numb right now.

One bit of "good" news is that a lactation consultant called yesterday. They don't have enough room to store all of my milk either in the NICU or at the LC offices. I guess 5 weeks of milk is a lot and they need to send some home with me and anything else I pump from now on stays here. Good thing he's not eating because there's no way I could keep up with a normal infants appetite at this point (stress does horrible things for a pumping/nursing mothers supply). We had to purchase a deep freeze to store it because it's a lot. We needed to buy a deep freeze anyway.