He was off oxygen today! The night shift nurse made a few errors tonight. They’ve been checking the residual food in James’ stomach prior to his next feed to make sure he is digesting his food. The nurse didn’t do this tonight. She also almost gave him 50 ml of…
Apparently James had a rough night last night. He had three or four of what we call ‘spells’ where his sats dropped. Sats refer to the level of oxygen in the blood. A "normal" reading is between 95 and 100 percent, but this normal reading can vary depending on the…
A pediatric hematologist stopped by today to talk to us about getting tested for factor V. If you recall from my post a couple of days ago (NICU Day 8), one of James’ blood tests revealed that he has factor V Leiden, which is a blood clotting disorder. James inherited…
James had a c-reactive protein (CRP) test yesterday that came back high. A CRP test is a blood test that measures the level of c-reactive protein in the blood. C-reactive protein is a protein made by the liver and is sent into the bloodstream in response to inflammation. Inflammation is…
They performed a spinal tap on James yesterday and the preliminary test results came back fine. The full results should be ready in a couple of days. The more technical term for spinal tap is ‘lumbar puncture’. For this procedure, they inserted a needle between two vertebrae in James’…
Well, we made it through our first week with an infant in the NICU. It was a long and emotional week, but we survived. Not too much happened today, but we did have a few moments of excitement. James had some blood drawn to test his blood gases. He…
We were hoping to get a good night’s sleep last night in our own bed, but that didn’t happen: 7:30 am – received a phone call from the attending doctor in the NICU. James started breathing heavy in the middle of the night, so they called for a chest x-ray…