The Incredible Hulk

Today's been a roller coaster dip. Yesterday afternoon the echo showed that the PPHN wsa a little worse than it had been on Tuesday. Obviously, this was not good news. We stressed a lot, and cried a lot, and prayed a lot last night.

They weaned his ECMO down through the night to the lowest settings it could go to without it clotting off. This morning when we came in the doctors and surgeons said he basically needed to come completely off ECMO. His body was not strong enough to handle another circuit change. Having been on this long was very stressful on his body, especially the vein and artery in his neck where the cannulas were.

This morning he was taken off ECMO with prettylow expectations regarding his outcome. Almost immediately his oxygen saturations dropeed to the high 60's, but after a little tweaking on the ventilator they slowly creeped back to the low 70's.

We went to get something to eat while they did the surgical procedure to remove the cannulas. When we came back in, his oxygenation had jumped up to the mid 80's!! The best part is that nothing had been changed on any of his settings, he just decided to chill out a little.

In reference to the "incredible hulk" title, since the ECMO's been disconnected, he's not as pink as he'd been. Obviously as his oxygenation goes down a little, he loses a little bit of color, but he's also EXTREMELY jaundiced. He's yellow enough that he looks a little green. All the extra blood products they've been giving him, combined with his liver being in a small state of shock and trauma from surgery, he's having a tough time keeping up with everything. It's not the kind of jaundice that can be treated with bili-lights though. Slowly, he'll catch up and not be quite so yellow-green :)

WE ARE ON THE CRAZIEST PART OF THE ROLLER COASTER YET! PRAY PRAY PRAY!!! IF ANYONE EVER NEEDED A MIRACLE, IT'S BRIGHAM, RIGHT NOW!