Bill and I carpooled to the hospital today, he dropped me off and went to the office. There was nothing too new on rounds for Brendan today, there will be a chest xray tomorrow to see how his lungs are doing. Getting blood last night definitely helped keep his sats up better today. Overall, Brendan seems to be in a better mood, with less pain than before. But his work of breathing has increased and his need for drugs has not gone down as much as I would have liked.

The nurses and I improvised a tummy time configuration that let him sleep a few hours in his favorite arm dangling position with his knees tucked under.

The physical therapists want to see Brendan have more arm and hand freedom so that he can work on his reaching/batting and getting to know his hands. I think Brendan is pretty happy with this. (the duck quack sound in the middle of the video is my dumb phone getting a text message) Of course that means more attention and supervision when he is in bed awake, and less getting anything done while I am at the hospital.

Trevor got to spend the entire day with Gramma, catching up on all they had missed.

I crashed last night, I was so exhausted! When Trevor went to sleep and we went to bed, I slept pretty hard and had very bizarre dreams. I woke up at 2am to pump and crashed again. Bill took care of feeding Trevor at 4am and 8am and I slept right through. Thanks Bill!! I really really needed that.

I gave Trevor a long bath and had a nice breakfast and then headed to the hospital to see Brendan. Starting yesterday, he was seeming to feel happier, but he was having trouble keeping his oxygen saturation up. Today was the same story, I walked in and they were giving him a pressure treatment. His chest xray showed some area in his left lung that looked bad so they started antibiotics and put him on contact isolation again just in case it was a viral infection. They are very paranoid about that for good reason. They did some more blood work to check for signs of infection and to look at blood gas and CBC numbers.

Once the blood test results came back, the answer was obvious. His white cell count was normal, most numbers were looking really good but his hemoglobin was low. They have taken so much blood for testing after his event on Thursday that he was just depleted. So they ordered him a transfusion. Once he has more oxygen carriers in his blood again, keeping his sats up should be a lot easier! The hazy area in his lung is just a result of his ongoing lung issue and his current treatments will help that.

I held him for a long time this afternoon. Keeping him mostly on his tummy helped him breathe more easily.

He was having a really good day, even with low sats.

Then I went to the airport and picked up a special visitor to see him – Gramma is back in town!

By the time we got back to the hospital, Brendan had just had his breathing treatments. One of his inhalers makes him get really loopy. He trembles and is wide awake and acts like a happy spazz drunk. It is amusing and a bit sad at the same time. But it is fun to see him happy! (Even blowing tons of bubbles) He especially liked his cute redhead nurse today, and saved all of his smiles and coos for her! I told her that he was flirting!
He did save some of his hyper smiles for Gramma too!

When we got home, we didn’t even let Gramma take her bags in to her room, we put her right to work with Trevor! He was going to make her feel bad and he cried when she first picked him up, but he was just needing to burp really badly. Once that was out of the way, it was back to old times, smiling and happy Trevor. She even got his first real giggle out of him!

Both Brendan and Grandpa Jack are doing better today, we hope they both continue to improve. Trevor slept 8 hours overnight!!

Not much news today, just bouncing between hospitals, seeing family, and trying to do some work. Brendan started his methadone weaning again, this time it is 0.3mg oral, not IV. He has been more like himself again, awake and interacting.
I am feeling totally depleted today, and in the interest of getting to bed, I am just going to fill this post with pictures!