Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Quick update on Luke

I am home for a couple of hours and Rachel is with Luke for the afternoon. Here's a quick update as of two hours ago - I'll post more tonight or in the morning. Yesterday the pulmonary team made some changes to Luke's oxygen. They increased the percentage up to 100% (from around 30%), but started to decrease the amount of flow. We started yesterday at 8 liters and now we are down to 2.5 liters. Keeping the percentage high should help with the collapsed area in his lungs, but once he gets below 2 liters and can tolerate it, we hope to start feeding him bottles.

When I left, his chest x-ray from this morning had not been seen by the doctor yet. They will compare it to yesterdays' and see how the collapsed area is doing. We may be moving back up to the 5th floor this evening - the doctors mentioned it this morning, but I was not ready just yet. His condition right now is stable enough that unless something develops this afternoon, I'm comfortable with moving him.

This morning Luke had an echo-cardiogram, but no results yet from that or yesterday's EKG. The "salt test" (for cystic fibrosis) will not be done today. We're told there is a strict criteria that must be met for the test to be accurate (oxygen levels, medications, etc.) and he may not be ready for it until just before discharge.

I'll try to get a little rest before heading back to see Luke and relieve Rachel for the night. I'm picking Jack up and will take him to the hospital with me for a quick visit. Thanks so much for the continued prayers, emails and notes of encouragement.

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