Third Wednesday

Seven was agitated all night. Morphine and Ativan were not helping. The nurse offered that it was especially worse when his diaper was wet. That information, added with the "sick" that we were seeing in his eyes, sounded like a bladder infection to Jarrad. The nurse took a preliminary urine analysis and it was "suspicious." To know for sure, we have to wait for the bacteria to grow, which can take a few days. But so far it looks like Jarrad was right. Hopefully this explains why Seven has looked ill to me for several days. We saw our Urologist and made some plans for future tests to see why he keeps getting these.

We got our MRI today. I'll start with the good news. Compared to the MRI Seven had when he was just a few days old, Seven's optic nerve hypoplasia has improved! That is the condition that affects his sight. The bad news is that the MRI shows some damage to the brain stem. The neurologist explained that this is the type of problem associated with hypernatremia. This probably has nothing to do with why we had to intubate again yesterday. However, this could explain some of the blood pressure fluctuations and temperature changes. It's possible that Seven's secretion control could be compromised as well. We just have to see how Seven does over the next few days. The brain stem damage can't be fixed and won't change from what it is now. It also won't get any worse. What it is now is what it is going to be. I was actually a little relieved because the damaged area isn't the part that controls personality. I should be able to get my Seven back. [insert smiley face icon here]

We are currently still on the ventilator, but plan on extubating tomorrow if possible. Seven should be able to breathe on his own if he can handle his secretions.

We are also planning an EEG for tomorrow to check if Seven is having some small seizure activity that we can't see to the naked eye.

As of this evening Seven's heart rate is back up in the normal range and so is his blood pressure.