Day 92 (37/4)

4:31pm – Hospital

Asher’s slowly recovering from his third brain surgery. His second shunt was installed this last Friday morning at 8am. This operation has hit the reset button on his feeds & respiratory support. The good news: we can now focus on getting him home!

He’s currently weighing in at 4lbs 12oz. He’s been consistently losing weight over the last week, even before surgery. He’s lost 4oz+ over the last 7 days, which is concerning…

It could simply be the healing process or his working extra hard for food when he was exclusively bottle fed and using the micro preemie nipple vs the preemie nipple (the latter has a higher flow)…

He’s also been on TPN and lipids the last couple of days. He’s increased in size during times like these in the past. We’re hoping his weight loss isn’t a reflection of something else going on…

He’s woken up a few times since surgery, but he’s not happy when he does. They gave him Ativan last night to keep him calm along with an “as needed” dose of morphine today…

His 24hr treatment of Tylenol is over, but we know he’s still in pain from the surgery…

His belly earlier today was distended from the blood transfusions received earlier today. His crit was down to 24 today. His baseline level for crit is 28 and yesterday he was 28.5. The transfusion should bring him back up to acceptable levels…

With the blood transfusion, it’s caused his bowels to “freeze”. We’ll have to wait one more day for his intestines to “turn back on” in order to reintroduce feeds. The TPN he’s on right now isn’t as robust as the one before so we’re hoping he can see some benefit from it no while not losing any more weight…

Brain Stuff

We’re still waiting on results for post op scans. He had a CT moments before we arrived at the hospital today…

Breathing Stuff

Dr Ramsey initially wanted to extubate him today but decided to wait until post op scans were completed…

Asher’s been really touchy during cares (irritable, more than likely from pain). When he’s like that his O2 requirements tend to remain high due to the desats and brady’s that accompany his irritability and pain…

We’re praying that he can be extubated in the next 24 hours…