One small step for man....

      It's been one small step at a time here in our little room on the regular Peds ward. Nolen's doing pretty good, but has had a few episodes of desats, high heart rates(these have been happening frequently) and high respiratory rates. The only concerning one of these is the high heart rates because that and his whimpers indicate that he is having some discomfort (from what I don't know, could be a lot of things, like the tube down his nose or one of his two ivs), but thankfully tylenol does a lot to manage his pain this time (unlike before where nothing touched it).   

     He has spit up his feeds once or twice but is managing to keep most of it down. Despite his few episodes of spiting up, they are going to try and keep on the same course with getting him weaned off the slow feeds & put on gravity pulled feeds. If he can handle gravity feeds then we might be coming home with a tube and still working towards getting back to nursing.

   The speech therapist came by today and Nolen has managed to nurse and get about an ounce before he tires out. Hopefully we'll keep trying to nurse and he'll be back up to his full feeds via nursing!!! He's been able to lose the hat and is down to one heavy blanket to keep his temperature up!

  There is talk of bringing in an occupational therapist and a physical therapist to see if there is anything we can do to assist him in regaining his strength. In some ways, it's like having a newborn all over again. I'm having to wake him to feed, reestablish a routine, reteach him how to hold his head up, rotate him so that his head isn't misshapen.

  The doctor spoke to us today, and he said that generally with the enterovirus there is no long lasting effects, but since Nolen's case was so severe that he couldn't say there wouldn't be anything residual or long lasting. Honestly, I think my little man will be just fine once he gets his feet back underneath him!