Four Weeks

Wren and Avery are now four weeks old!

Avery's next biggest obstacle is trying to get off of ventilator support successfully.  To do this, she will receive steroids which will help strengthen her lungs just enough to wean down the settings over a few days and finally kick the machine.  If she can do that, she gets one more tube taken out!  We look forward to getting to see this babies without tubes and wires all over the place.  Her hydrocephalus is still being managed via the reservoir.  The doctors tap the fluid about 14-15 mL every other day or so to keep it down.  Coming up with permanent management for that will probably be the last big hurdle she'll have to get through a few months down the road when she's bigger and stronger.

For Wren, we are still just hoping that the breathing tube in her left lung is going to give her the chance she needs to make it through.  The chest x-ray from yesterday showed that the right lung was finally fully collapsed for the first time, with all of the air bubbles gone from the damaged blebs.  That means the lungs can potentially begin their healing process and the slow effort of replacing the damaged tissue with scar tissue.  We won't be able to wait long enough for the damage to fully scar, we just need to wait long enough that the blebs don't fill back up with air as soon as they start normal ventilation again.  Our doctor was researching with another doctor this morning since there is so little experience with this situation.  There is some research literature out there talking about this type of treatment of the lungs, but typically it's used successfully on older children or adults.  There is limited literature available on situations like this, and littler still on cases where the left lung is the only useful one.  The research in some cases is recommending to not leave the tube in longer than 7 days, but we're just hoping that it's in just long enough to give her a fighting chance.

Dear Wren -- we're all for contributing research to the medical field, but don't you think it might be more fun if you just had simpler problems to deal with?