The Story of Monday January 25th

Another good day; I went down to CHLA to see Reagan, then stopped by SJRMC on my way home to see Landon, while Hillary spent the day with Landon.

Reagan is steadily improving.  As I said before, they took him off of the high frequency oscillating ventilator and put him back on a regular ventilator.  That's a big move for him and so far he is adapting well to it.  Usually, Reagan hasn't liked big changes and has frequently regressed when they were made, but this time it took.  They had given him two more blood transfusions when they did it, so it looked like that helped.  They also were able to lower his nitric oxide to a super low number, which means that they are slowly weaning him off that.  I talked to the doctor yesterday and the plan was to take him off of the NO hopefully on Wednesday. 

With the blood transfusion, and being taken off the oscillating vent, Reagan wasn't fighting the machines as much, so his blood pressure came back up to normal levels and they were able to take him off of the dopamine.  So, all-in-all, a great sign of progress for Reagan.

Reagan also got his first hair cut (kinda).  They wanted to put a new IV line in him and the most prominent vein was on the side of his head so they had to trim his hair a bit there and stick it in.  Check it out.....

And check out these cute little booties on him.....

And here he is just relaxin.....

And here is a video of him on the regular vent.....

Compare that with this old video of him on the oscillating vent.....

So Reagan is getting there, baby-steps.  Hopefully within a week we can move him back to SJRMC.

And now on to Landon.....

They moved Landon to a different NICU at SJRMC, so we have a whole new batch of nurses to get to know now.  Let me just take a minute to say that the nurses at St. John's couldn't be nicer.  Always asking about Reagan, letting us know that both the boys are in their thoughts and prayers.  One of the nurses was telling me that a new nurse was calling in on her days off a while back, asking about the children in the NICU and they had to tell her that she had to let work go when she was off, otherwise it would start to consume her and she would never be able to enjoy her time away from work.  Well the older nurse was telling me that everyone in the NICU was regularly checking in on Landon and whether or not there were updates about Reagan.  I thought that was really nice.

So Landon is doing great.  As soon as we can get him on the bottle and on the boob he can come home.  I can't wait.  It will be a little bittersweet having only one of the boys home, but we know that they will both be home sometime soon.

Hillary is off to the OB for a checkup, a quick visit with Landon then off to CHLA for some Reagan time (and hopefully even more good news).

I'm off to see Landon, then going in to work to fly tonight.  It will be good to fly, but it means I have to shave my beard.  Hillary will be happy with that.

Wednesday I am going down to CHLA early for Reagan, then back to Ventura in time to pick up Amanda at school and go to soccer practice.  We are scrimmaging the other all-star team so we can get ready for the next round of the all-star tournament.  A little bit of normalcy.