Parker Duran vs. Sir Isaac Newton

July 13 7:30

So Isaac Newton is relaxing under an apple tree one glorious summer day when an apple falls out of the tree and clocks him in the head.......and voilla ( I think that's how you spell whallllaaa?) he discovers gravity and coins the now famous phrase "what goes up must come down"....unless of course you break the earth's atmosphere and find yourself floating aimlessly in the vast abyss of cold nothingness.......anyway.....my son Parker seems to be challenging Sir Isaac Newton. He seems to think that what comes down must go back up. This is what we discovered last night at about midnight. We called in (this is one of the great things about the UCD NICU......yes we called at about ten then again at midnight to get an updates) to find out how his latest blood gas had gone. He had had one in the morning that showed his CO2 levels down in the 50's....which was a huge blessing in that he had been up in the 70's most of the prior day after being put on the new vent. We were thrilled. Knowing that he would be having another gas late last night we really wanted to call in and find out if it was staying low or had he had a third repeat performance of not liking this vent. It was not a pleasant call. His CO2 was back up again. The nurse asked if we could if we could call back a little later as they were making some vent adjustments and would be taking another gas within the hour. That brought about our next call which was about midnight. This was the scary call. His most recent test had him now up in the 80's. We were told that the docs were bedside and were discussing what to do next. Needless to say it made for a restless night sleep. When we called back this morning we found out that Parker's need to buck Newton by having his numbers go back up caused them to switch him back onto the oscilator ( yes for the third time in a week or so they tried to change out his vent and wound up going back to the oscilator.) So by this afternoon his CO2 levels had climbed back down into the low 50's and upper 40's. There are still some other factors now that have to balance themselves out (lots of new stuff that I don't quite have my head wrapped around completely yet). So here he sits now back on his oscilator. We spoke in depth with the nurses and the doctor and pretty much can summarize the situation like this: He's simply not ready for the other vent. The plan (at least at this point.....we'll see how quickly it changes) is to stop trying to get him off of the oscilator and just let him get fat and happy. They will try and get his feedings up and get some weight on him before revisiting the vent switch......how long???....they're saying a week or two (but you've been reading enough of these by now to know how quickly things change in the NICU.)

Tyler on the other hand has been doing really well. He's handled the new vent beautifully and seems to like it better. He still continues to desat and recover constantly and continues to be really really wiggly, but at least his gas levels seem to be somewhat stable. Despite being up to 16ml on his feedings he hasn't gained weight in a couple of days.......although he did have a......shall we call it a massive blow out in the stool department......just as the nurse was changing him which prompted a complete linen change in his incubator. Now he has cool red white and blue linens that look very patriotic:):) His next hurdle is getting off the TPN and getting the Pic line out. We'll see what tonights phone call brings.