Day 40

Another good day.  Wren's blebs in her right lung are still down, but on the flip side, she continues to work hard at breathing well.  Eventually, they are going to want to take care of her heart murmur the same way they did with Avery, which is by a surgical ligation on the heart, but they have to wait until they really feel like the right lung is strong enough to handle it, since they have to flatten the left lung for the duration of the surgery.  They don't want to wait too long to do that, and at the same time they can't do it too soon, so there's a bit of a fine line to walk there.  Other than that, she needs time and to get bigger slowly.  She is receiving pain medicine again while she is dealing with the current state of her lungs.  She has had a good number of "spells" where her heart rate drops and she desaturates somewhat sharply.  To compensate for this, the RT quickly intervenes and bumps up the pressure on her ventilator before she drops below 60% or so.  That has seemed to make a good difference.  When she has big spells, they can actually see her turn a little blue, but these are rare, and they help her get through them.

Avery is still doing well on the CPAP.  She is eating around 21 mLs every 3 hours now, which is good.  She seems to be doing well with the taps of her brain reservoir twice a week on Sundays and Thursdays.  They are trying to slowly reduce the pressure she needs from the ventilator to get her closer to the next step.

We finished another book today.  These girls will be well read by the time they are out.