To say it has been an emotional few days would be a major understatement.
Evan is all settled in the isolation room in the NICU. Thankfully, the respiratory screen and cultures were all negative for infection or illness. We knew that if he was positive for anything (RSV especially), we'd have to leave the NICU so as to not infect the other babies. Since Evan isn't sick, the mandatory gowning and masking was discontinued. The antibiotics were also discontinued since all of the tests came back negative. Yay! They'll leave the IV line in for now though. Evan is running out of veins since he's had so many IVs.
Evan's feeds were started back at 20 mL and then increased to 30 mL. For a little boy that is used to eating however much he wants, he has adapted pretty well. I was expecting him to be upset and looking for more food, but I think he's just so wiped out from trying to breathe. He's receiving his milk through his stomach (OG) tube. His fluids were discontinued as well.
An X-ray shows that Evan's airway is narrowed (or "steepled"). This could be from a number of things: croupe (or croupe like illness), RSV, prematurity or from intubation. Since we know Evan isn't sick, we can rule out the first two situations. Evan will have a bronchoscopy tomorrow so the ENT and NICU doctors can develop a course of action to treat him.
Evan and I are spending a lot of time snuggling. While he was home, he barely left our arms so now that he's back in the NICU, I think he's feeling a little bit disgruntled. The nurses helped settle Evan on me and we sat and rocked for hours today. I talked to him the whole time as he held on to my sweater. It was just heartbreaking to know that he was in such discomfort and all we could do to help was to snuggle.
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