William is doing better. He's still pretty beat up, but they've started slowly decreasing his blood pressure meds and weaning him off of some oxygen. He's been saturating well enough for them to be able to do that! Also, the doc here today tried to get the IV into his wrist again, but no luck and she said he was punching her ❤ good job being feisty, William! That he's feeling like that is good while he's dealing with an infection. Today has been mostly quiet for him otherwise. They're still monitoring his blood sugar and adjusting insulin. They've narrowed down the bacteria causing the infection, and tomorrow they'll get some test results back that will help them decide the best antibiotic cocktail for him (they expect to be able to stop some of what he's getting). So, because the steroid is kicking in and the antibiotics are kicking in, that's probably why he's doing much better consistently today. The steroid softens up his lungs, which allows them to decrease the pressure and the amount of forced breaths he receives from the ventilator.
They did say his lungs look pretty sick and pretty beat up, so we hope he can heal himself enough while he's receiving steroids to continue on the trajectory we're on.
The next big thing is that we really need to figure out whether the arterial line in his belly button is contaminated or not. And ultimately, they'd like to be able to have that line go into his wrist, because it's better for long term. So today we are grateful for William being in better shape and getting better oxygen saturation. Now Jeff and I just actually need to be able to get some sleep... he's been doing better at that than me, because I'm also trying to maintain/increase breastmilk supply (I went for a long time without doing anything on Friday while things looked so grim, so now I have to let my body get the signals again that we need to produce! Haha)
And on top of all last night, Granddad Pierce tried to fix our clogged kitchen sink, which kind of backfired.... so we were not only trying to understand the emergency surgery, but also trying to reach our janitor while trying to avoid the whole kitchen getting flooded with Drano sewage water... when it rains, it pours sewage in the kitchen! At least it will hopefully get fixed now, right? 😉
