Today was pretty similar to the last few days. Andrew continued to be sedated and paralyzed with medication, though he did manage to open his eyes once this morning. We still haven't heard any results from the tests that were run on Wednesday...the doctor is trying to get a few specialists to all take a look. If they have a chance to review and discuss the labs tomorrow morning, then we'll have a family conference in the afternoon. If not, they'll at least give us a better idea of when they'll have an opportunity to discuss it.
I'm pretty sure the doctors have no idea what's going on, and that none of the tests provided any more clarification. I saw some of Andrew's x-rays today, and they paint quite a curious picture. Last Thursday, before his extubation, everything looked great. On Friday, his left lung was hyper-inflated (it shows up almost black on the x-ray) and his right lung was somewhat cloudy. Over the last week, it appears that they've both gotten a bit better....the left is looking more normal, and the right is looking less cloudy. But he's still requiring a lot of support, and his blood gases haven't been as good as they were a few weeks ago. They're still mixing his oxygen with helium, and he's still at almost 50% oxygen intake.
There is one area in which Andrew's progress has advanced in the last few days...his feedings. Since he's completely calm, he hasn't had any reflux issues, so they've increased his feed volumes to 14cc per hour. They're being pretty conservative about how quickly they advance (about 2 per day), but every step forward is a good one.
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