Progress report

I spent last night at the hospital with Magnus, and while it was a better night than the one before, it is definitely taking a toll on both Iggy and myself to see our little guy so unhappy. I don't know if it's because he is in chronic low-level pain, or just because he's freaked out from everything he's been through, but every time he has his diaper changed or his temperature taken (axillary, not rectal!), he SCREAMS. And then his sats go down and the monitor beeps, and it's just a very stressful situation.

So anyway, I spoke to the nurse practitioner again this afternoon and we went over what he still has to do to get out of here. For one thing, he has to get off of oxygen. He's actually had his oxygen turned off for the last hour or so, and the cannula is still in his nose, which actually makes it a little harder to breathe than not having the cannula at all, and he's been doing fine. The one exception to this is the aforementioned screaming whenever anything is done to him, but he is usually able to recover his sats pretty quickly. I don't think getting off oxygen will be a problem.

The next thing he has to do is to transition from IV to oral diuretics. That's going to happen tomorrow, and again, I am pretty optimistic.

The third thing is the one I am most worried about, which is that he has to show that his infection issues are under control. They're still not sure about the source of his infection, his temperature has been normal, and his white blood cell count was down from yesterday...but still elevated. Basically, they're going to test him again tomorrow, and his white blood cell count has to be normal in order for him to go home. This is the one that makes me the most nervous, because his WBCs were still elevated this morning despite having had 24 hours of IV antibiotics. Tomorrow he will have another 24 hours' worth on board, and hopefully that will do the trick, but who knows.

The upshot is, I think that if his WBCs look good tomorrow morning, we should be able to go home Friday. And I really, really, really hope we can go home Friday.

In happy news, Magnus's grandpa Eddie and grandma Debbie arrived in town this afternoon, and got to meet Magnus for the first time! I wish he were a little more himself right now but hopefully, they'll get to experience Magnus in all his glory before they go home next week!