All In a Week

Eli's had some week. On Tuesday, a week after being diagnosed with Stage 2 retinopathy of prematurity, a condition that could require laser surgery, he underwent another eye exam. Blessedly, the ROP hadn't progressed, and the opthalmologist told us surgery was now less likely.

On Wednesday, Eli was seen by an ENT, who placed a scope down his airway to look for blockage. She found swelling around his vocal cords and a growth of scar tissue--both effects of his breathing tube. Which made us all the more hopeful that when his doctors tried, for a third time, to take Eli off the respirator that day, he'd be able to manage without it and breathe with assistance from a less-intrusive nasal device known as CPAP.

The nurses in the NICU like to say of the babies, "He's the boss" and "She's the boss." Well, by day's end Eli's orders were clear: He wasn't going for the CPAP. Even harder for us than receiving that outcome was watching him struggle to breathe without the respirator. He writhed, wheezed and faintly (but not tearlessly) cried for hours until the overnight doctor decided to reintubate him. We'd gone home just before 11 p.m., when Eli was still on CPAP. If he could make it through the night, we thought, maybe he'd get used to breathing without the respirator. Around midnight, just before bed, Stephanie called in to see how he was doing. That's when we learned he'd been reintubated. So much for a restful sleep.

Then came Friday, when, just in time for a visit by Grandma Camille and Grandpa Bill, Eli began retracting heavily while breathing. His doctor ordered chest X-rays and a transfusion. The nurse changed Eli's position and gave him his pyhsiotherapy, tapping on his torso with a rubber-headed instrument to try to free any mucus that may have collected in his lungs. The X-ray results arrived in late afternoon. They showed a partial collapse in Eli's upper right lung. This may sound grave, but it's actually a common occurrence that tends to rectify itself. Mommy, Daddy and grandparents exhaled and went to dinner a couple of blocks from the hospital. When we popped in to see Eli afterward, his lung had reinflated. A peaceful sleep, for him and us, at last.