July 6, 2006

One more big day. They found a pocket of air outside of his lung in the chest cavity on the left side. This is called a pneumothorax. So now he is sporting a chest tube on his left that goes in and sucks out the air. Having the air in the chest cavity makes is hard and somewhat painful to breathe. So this is helping a lot. This is just one of the complications from being born with immature lungs.

Because of this, they moved Michael from the isolet onto the open bed. This allows them easier access to do any procedures that might need doing.

He also got a PIC (?) line put in to replace his IV. This line runs further into the body to a larger section of vein. This tends to be a more secure connection than a traditional IV, so they don't need to replace it as often. It also allows them to pump more fluids in, which comes in handy as he in now getting his nutrition (lipids and such) through his IV.

At one point they also inserted an arterial line to make blood draws easier. This way they didn't need to heel stick him every few hours to check his blood gas and biliruben levels. This line didn't wind up staying in very long (a day or so) because it clogged up. Several people mentioned that he seems to be a good bleeder, but had relatively think blood.