Nurses, nurses, nurses....

Hello my big friends,

Patrick here reporting on the latest and greatest from my first....well second home....6 East NICU.  Life has been puttering along, measuring my meals every three hours, measuring my diapers, measuring my blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels, etc.....

I have been steadily growing and gaining weight each day.  Since my casts were put on, however, I have been a little off my total weight since my legs now weigh about as much as the rest of me.  But if you get too close I'll knock you in the head with them!

Lately the biggest item of note has been my many visitors.  Since they lifted the parents only rule in the NICU it has been a revolving door around here.  I know that there are more to come that would like nothing more than to shake my hands and never again wash their own!  Let me tell you....I'm ready for that!  My latest visitor was Marmie coming over Friday afternoon to help me finish a bottle and give me some good ole' nap time!


Helping Marmie with some chow time!


Hanging on to Marmie, as only I know how!

Medically I continue to have some ups and downs.  Lately it has been some pretty severe desaturations of oxygen that has been keeping me at bay from the rest of the world.  Ideally they would like to see me never leave 85-100% saturation of oxygen.  This will drop due to shallow breathing or not breathing at all for some time.  Normal people have their carbon-dioxide detectors on in their brain to help them with this, however, I still have some learning to do in this department.  Last night I dropped down to 40% and it took some time to get me back up into the normal ranges, and then I had another little episode this afternoon once Mom and Dad left.

My other screening results (Head, Lungs, Liver, Kidneys, Bladder, & Heart) have all turned up normal, and they continue to drop the temperature of my incubator towards room temperature. 


My new threads from Jack and Janie!

The only other new item of note is a swollen node in my neck hidden in my sternocleidomastoid muscle.  (And for those of you reading that don't believe that's the spelling I encourage you to look it up! Even at 6 weeks old I am a stellar speller)  The docs don't think this is really anything to worry about yet, we just need to keep a close eye on it!  For now I am staying put despite the frustration of my parents, but they know this is where I need to be.

Bon appétit!
Patrick "I can't stop dancing" Linn