Bumps in the Road Day 15 and 16!

Good evening everyone. I am back in town and here to get you all caught up on Calen. Today there was a lot of news for me to learn about. His weight is still doing well, a bit of fluctuating but really for the most part looking at the whole graph he is stable. As of today (Sunday) he is back to not being on any breast milk feedings. He is receiving 15ml of blood, his hemoglobin was once again low. They tested his stool for blood to check for any gastric bleeding and it has came back negative so at this point the drops in hemoglobin are unexplained.

This is his blood transfusion that was going in tonight. It will run over 3 hours. It is only 15ml, which is a tablespoon. They will check his blood again in the morning to see if his hemoglobin is back up to normal. 

During Calen's first blood transfusion he had an IV started in his arm. They were not using it after that point and it was removed to help prevent infection from developing. Since he was receiving another blood transfusion they had to start a new IV. It took 3 nurses and 4 attempts to get a new IV placed which marks his first scalp IV. Most likely not his last that he will ever have to receive but really sad that he had to get it, I liked feeling his head and his hair, now he has stuff in the way of doing that. Most likely once his blood counts are good again, that IV will be removed until another one becomes needed. 

Holly told me on Saturday to be praying for Calen because he was really having trouble breathing. He had his SiPAP increased a few days back to 15 breaths a minute from 10. They decided it would be a good idea to increase the size of the prongs that were going into his nose which worked for a while, but as the night went on he continued to struggle with his breathing. So down to the next picture... 

At 10:30pm last night (Saturday) they had to intubate Calen. This is an extreme down side to all the positives we have been seeing, but we kinda knew it was coming, we were really hanging onto the fact that he might do so amazing that he would never require it. It happened and he is tolerating it well, he seems to be very much at peace and calm in his incubator. He was just so tired. He worked for 2 full weeks prior to not being able to make it on his own, so we are very proud of him and thank God for the time he was able to work on his own to build his muscles. They said since he did very well prior to this event, they feel he might only be on the ventilator for about a week. Please continue to pray for his rest so he can resume normal breathing soon and be healthier and stronger because of it.