20 days

"Round and round and round we go, where we'll stop, no one knows."

If you're busy, that pretty much sums up the past couple days. I'd say Friday was a two steps forward kind of day, whereas late-Saturday and Sunday were each one step back, which leaves us in a place that looks oddly familiar.

Bryce has both of his eyes open now, and he was eating like a champ. The steroids they were using to accelerate lung development do not appear to have had a significant impact on him, although they have been slowly reducing his ventilator settings. On Friday, they decided to take him off his Fentanyl drip, which meant that he would no longer be receiving a steady stream of pain medication (Fentanyl is like morphine, but more potent). Unfortunately, by Saturday night, Bryce was very "twitchy", and his agitation was causing his blood pressure to drop. To keep his blood pressure up, they had to put him on medication, which meant that the feedings had to stop. On Sunday, they decided that he was going through Fentanyl withdrawal, so they put him back on the drip this afternoon. I had no idea that I had to have the "drug talk" with my kids this early.

Chloe, on the other hand, seems to have improved significantly on the steroids. They actually extubated (removed the breathing tube from) her on Saturday afternoon, and she was breathing on her own. However, like her brother on day 1, she got tired after a few hours, so they put her on a low-power ventilator. Unfortunately, she relapsed a bit when they stopped the steroids on Sunday, so now she's back to the high-frequency ventilator, albeit at lower settings than before. With regard to her feedings, Chloe's a bit behind her big brother. She was struggling to digest the milk, so they decided to take a break for the weekend, and are planning to try again tonight.

I've saved the best news for last. They scanned both of the twins' brains again this morning, and while Chloe's ventricle bleed was unchanged (that's a good thing), Bryce's IVH has improved so much that they're not going to bother with checking it again until just before discharge! Go, twinkies! :) Print this post