long road

July 6 10:45 pm

Well, it's becoming more and more clear that this is definitely going to be a long road full of constant turmoil. Tyler needed a little help today in the red blood cell department. When we got there today the nurse seemed pretty concerned about his heart rate. It had been as high as 210 (normally it's about 165). They basically were giving him a blood transfusion. They thought that his little heart was beating so hard because he was low on red blood cells and was therefore having trouble keeping his body oxygenated (red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body). His being low, the heart was having to move blood to the cells faster to keep up with the demand. They seemed to be right. Not long after the trasfusion his heart rate came back down and seemed to remain rather steady from then on. He has double his original feeding amount and seems to be back on cruise control. Our little Parker, however continues to struggle. After a pretty good day yesterday, he hopped back on the roller coaster and has seen 100% oxygen levels again today. The new theory does not include his PDA. The belief is that it remains closed and is not the culprit. This mornings x-ray showed that his upper right lung is either partially collapsed or has fluid on it. Either way it is not able to function normally and thus is not allowing his blood gasses to stabalize. They have taken a spewtum (another word i have no clue how to spell) sample and are culturing it to see if there is an infection. We were told this would take a couple of days. They are apparantly not waiting though, since we just found out tonight that they have started him on two different anti-biotics. I'm really hoping it is an infection and that within 24 hours the anti-biotics kick it in the butt so that he can stabalize. He's really been going through a tough battle these last three days. They are unable to increase his feedings, but at least they have not decreased or eliminated them. An extremely worrysome day to say the least. Hoping for better news for tomorrow's blog:)