Day 5- Removing fluid

We talked to the doctor this morning and all of Parker's labs look great. His creatinine went up to 1.2, but that is still an amazingly good number. His kidneys are still maintaining on their own! How awesome is that? We will, however, run the dialysis port this afternoon. They will only be running fluid through it, though. They are not running actual "dialysis", because his kidneys are doing just fine.  They are using the port because there is a little fluid around his lungs and the doctors believe that if we could drain that fluid, the lungs will respond better. By relieving some of this pressure that he has, we are hoping that he can begin initiating breaths on his own again. This morning his settings were higher up with his vent than usual, so we are trying to get him back to where he was. Being that his port is new, they are not running a lot of fluid through it. The doctor said he would only use about 30 cc's. I asked about the site of the port leaking, being it is so soon after having it placed. Dr. Lunyong said that they tested 30 cc's through it yesterday after surgery and it held up just fine. He also mentioned that they upped Parker's feedings to 5 cc's of milk every 6 hours and he is doing well with that. Also, his nurse was so excited to see us this morning. She had been saving a diaper to show us that they had a small amount of urine in it. Yay for Parker and his pee pee diaper! She was just as excited as us. 

Since this morning they have run the fluid through his port continuously. It takes about 10 minutes to pump the fluid into his belly, they let it sit in there for 30 minutes, and then they drain the fluid out. The hope is that when they drain the fluid that they will pull out more than they put in. So far, since they started running the fluid at around lunch, they have removed 33 extra cc's of fluid. So this is 33cc's of fluid that was causing Parker discomfort! Poor baby! Parker has been tolerating the fluid really well. His nurse has been keeping a close eye on his blood pressure and his oxygen levels. While we were up there visiting earlier, Parker decided to show off and have a oxygen saturation of 100. He's already a big ham! They have been able to lower his settings on the vent slightly, but we are happy with this. So far everything is going well. Please continue the prayers. They are working!

Oh, I forgot to mention that he had his open for a very long time this morning, and this time Jason was there to see it! It was so nice being able to see this. He has been sedated and sleeping for so long now, poor thing!