Up and Down; Twist and Turn

My intention is not to make anyone cry or get upset when reading my blog. I also do not want to offend anyone by my bluntness. If I do, I am sorry. We knew that there were going to be lots of bumps and potholes in the road during Parker's NICU journey.

You know you think you are prepared for the ups and downs and twists and turns, but you don't expect the ride to be so drastic. Every day/hour Parker's status can change from one extreme to another.

Parker is doing well again today. He is responding beautifully to the antibiotics. He is back to his normal self. He is still just on the nasal cannula and doing well with it. When we had the consult today at 11:00 with Vivek he was very optimistic for a full recovery from the meningitis. We caught it early enough that it may not cause any long term damage. To put things in perspective, Parker is still doing very well for a 26 weeker. The fact that he went the first 10 days without any major issues is remarkable. Now we need to just get this infection under control and move on. The next four weeks are still critical for Parker. They are concerned about something called Necrotizing Enterocditis. Right now he shows no signs so I am not going to give you any more details at this time.

Today they are going to proceed with another head ultrasound as a precautionary measure to ensure there is no swelling. The bacteria came back as E coli, so they are tweaking his treatment from three antibiotics down to two. E. coli is the name of a bacterium that lives in our digestive tracts. This is an issue with Parker, because he does not have an adequate immune system to regulate his own bacteria.

Seeing Parker today was definitely reassuring. He looked so much better. He was opening his eyes and moving around. I could tell he was feeling much better.