Thursday, August 07, 2008

Day 4 - August 3, 2008


Miles is continuing to improve. They machines are giving him only 50% oxygen, which is a big improvement from the 100% he was receiving initially. We've been told that once he gets down to 30%, they will remove his breathing tube. We are looking forward to that day because that is the day that Jeremy and I will be able to hold him for the first time. We are extremely encouraged and it looks like it will just take time for him to get better. Miles' attending physician, Dr.Rosenfeld, seems to be the most conservative in giving good news. But even he has said that unless Miles takes an unforeseen step backward, he is well on his way to being healthy. Interesting fact about Dr.Rosenfeld: Evidently he is a very well-known neonatal intensivist who has seen over 300,000 babies in his 35+ years at Parkland (he was there they day they brought JFK in after he was shot). He said he has never seen premature closure of the ductus, and could only find two case studies on it. It is something that has been studied more on animals than infants, so they are having to feel their way through this and use a little bit of gut instinct to know how to treat Miles. We are not being given a time frame at this point on when Miles will be able to come home. It was encouraging last night to see him more active - Jeremy and I saw his eyes open for the first time! Here is a picture we were able to get using night vision on our camera. We like to think he even smiled at us a couple of times, but even if it wasn't truly a smile it sure made us light up!

I am scheduled to be discharged tomorrow. I'm feeling fine. Thanks again for all the emails, phone calls, flowers, goodie boxes, and encouragement over the last several days. It's meant a ton!

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