Harvesting Joy

J continues to impress us. His labs are all fine, not even immunosuppressed from his new meds yet, hopefully that continues. ECMO did most of his breathing last night to give his lungs a little more rest before his big day today. His chest xray looks ok. The left lung's fluid surrounding it seems to be less, and we are actually seeing some fluid drain from the left chest tube (it's been barely weeping despite the apparent abundant fluid in his chest by xray). The right upper lobe of his lung looked good yesterday afternoon after his bronch, but it was collapsed again on this morning's xray. So we repeated the bronch and sucked out some major nasties, Adam Sandler would be impressed. The most promising bit of this is that he tolerated the bronchoscopy really well on just the ventilator (no ECMO support). His blood gases look good, and assuming they continue to be good at noon he will be removed from ECMO this afternoon! We'll discuss left chest tube placement to get better drainage and tracheostomy later today... knock on wood (my skull). Yes, progress continues!! Thanks again for all your thoughts, prayers, and generous gestures...it's comforting to know people are rooting for him!!