Rough Days Ahead

The NICU rollercoaster reared its ugly head today.  This morning around 9:15 Trey started to take a turn for the worse.  His oxygen saturation dropped suddenly and he was unable to bring it back up on his own.  They increased the high-flow oxygen to six liters, and administered albuterol (a rescue inhaler) twice.  They also began a dexamethasone treatment (the aggressive steroid we had been avoiding).  He appeared to have stable vitals and was maintaining baseline stats throughout the day, but repeated blood gas tests showed extremely elevated carbon dioxide levels.  He was reintubated around 6 o'clock this evening.  Everyone is completely surprised and disappointed.  The NICU staff was absolutely wonderful to us today, helping out with Stella, offering hugs, and sharing kind and compassionate words. 

The good news is Trey is comfortable on the sedative they are giving him, and he is completely stable on this increased respiratory support.  Now we can only wait it out a few days to see what happens.  The doctors suspect he either has some type of infection, or that he inhaled milk into his lungs.  He is being treated with antibiotics just in case he has a bacterial infection, and they will continue to look at chest x-rays to see what's happening with his lungs.  The bad news is that the ventilator will aggravate his chronic lung disease, so the goal will be to extubate him as soon as possible.

A good article which helps explain our lung functions can be read here:
http://www.lung.ca/lung101-renseignez/respiratory-respiratoire/how-comment/index_e.php