Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Just when I start to have doubts, the boy proves me wrong! AGAIN. Connor had his high flow oxygen removed yesterday! The NICU team decided to try him without it (since he would pull them out of place all the time anyway, the little monkey) and see how he did. He has been doing the same, if not better, without them!

We had another family meeting today with one of the neonatalologist fellows and our social worker. Overall, Connor is doing amazingly well. 

He is off high flow oxygen and doing very well. Sometimes he breathes a little too fast, but apparently that is typical for his age. There is a very remote chance that he will need low flow oxygen for a period of time.

Connor is still taking feeds over 45 minutes. We will decrease it to 30 minutes on Friday (because he has another eye exam tomorrow and we don't want to stress him more than we have to) and next week will try bolus feeds. We will most likely then consult an occupational therapist and start oral feeding, probably within the next couple weeks. They think it will probably take him 4 weeks to learn how to feed orally because he has to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing at the same time and he has had respiratory assistance for a long time. 

His eye exam yesterday showed a very small progression of ROP. :( There is progression from Zone 2 to between Zones 1 and 2 in both eyes since last week. He will get another exam tomorrow and then we can decide what the next steps will be. We will probably continue to have eye exams twice a week for awhile. We still have treatment options (repeating the intraocular Avastin injections) and Stage 2 is much better than Stage 3 plus disease that he had a few weeks ago. Stage 2 is still reversible. 

His last head ultrasound showed no bleeding and we do not need any more follow up. :)

He still has a very small PDA in his heart but no further echocardiograms are required. The doctors expect that it will close on its own by 44 weeks. 

Once Connor's eye exams become much less frequent, McMaster will be transferring him to Joseph Brant. They think his discharge home will likely be April or May now.....which means when we tell Connor, he will prove us wrong again and be home sooner. :)