And Odds and Ends

Isaac is now dressed in a little onsie since he doesn't have many tubes or wires in the way.

His cord came off yesterday morning. Yay!

There is rumor that they want to transfer him to the children's unit one floor down. On this floor the nurses are trained to handle diabetic children. Also the NICU is getting more sick babies in and want to move the less sick babies out. Currently there are still beds available in the NICU and none on the floor below. Dr. Z and Dr. C are both very much against transferring him, and are fighting to keep him. Dr. Z contends that the doctors on the floor below may not want to continue down the same treatment path using the sulfonylureas (it is new and a there isn't a lot of research on it), they don't know his case history well and have not done the research the docs on the NICU have done and this may delay treatment, plus his blood sugars still are not stable. I think she may want to keep him too, because his case interests her and she would like to see it resolved. I found out that she's read hours of articles each night on his particular condition, and I think she is loathe to not see him through to the end. We'll see what happens. I kind of hope he stays as well.

Since he is doing so much better, he now shares a nurse with another bed and has for the past few days. Just another sign that he is getter more stable, anyways.

His oxygen levels still dip up and down, but not wildly so. He is on a minimal amount of oxygen. They did an echocardiogram yesterday, and the results are a normal looking heart, but one of the fetal shunts hasn't completely closed off yet.

They are still trying to track down a geneticist who would know what labs to draw and where to send them. Either the labs would show what the problem was, or it would eliminate some possibilities...

"Little Chow Hound"

That's how Isaac's nurse described him after she fed him at 9 pm last night. He downed 3 oz easily and probably would have eaten more if she'd warmed it up. I came in at midnight and he nursed enthusiastically on one side. Probably got about 3 oz then too, judging by how little I was able to pump on that side afterward compared to the other.

His color looks fantastic! Even just 6 hours earlier when I had left him he was pale, pale. He is now a lovely rosy color. They took the oxygen off of him too, because he's able to maintain good levels on his own. An hour after his midnight eating, his sugar level was 195 which for him is pretty good! The results of the pancreas ultrasound came back normal. At least his pancreas looks normal, if only it would act normal!

I'll return in a few hours and hopefully catch his doctors during the morning bedside rounds so I can listen in on their ideas and game plan for him.

A couple things I haven't mentioned

Little Rygg's oxygen was a little low when we arrived at the ER, so first they put a little oxygen blower by his face, then put a more serious-looking set of nasal tubes around his head.  He's been on it since.
When we got back to the NICU this afternoon, they told us that they've postponed the PICC indefinitely since he's responding so well to the IV insulin.  He probably won't need the PICC after all, which is good because there's a long list of things that can (rarely) go wrong with that.
His last two glucose measurements were 163, then they stopped the insulin, and just now 106.  Now Rachel gets to feed him.