Ups and Downs

 Yesterday was a great day.  We had many blessings occur.  One of which is that they took out the tube which was in Jeremy's mouth which pumped air into him.  The oxygen content of the air he was breathing was that of the room, so they wanted to see if he could breathe on his own.  One of the worries with his brain stem is that it wouldn't send the signal to his body to breathe.  Jeremy successfully breathed on his own for over seven hours.  However, they had to extend his neck back (see top picture) otherwise his heart rate would drop.  They tried to send a probe down his throat to find the reason why he was so positional in his breathing and ended up having to re-intubate him again.  This time the machine isn't doing the breathing for him, just helping him out.  So, although he is back on the tube, he is doing better.

They are taking him into the OR and putting him under so they can find out what is going on with his airway.  That was supposed to happen earlier today, but they are running behind, so it will either be later tonight or in the morning they do so.  If they find something, they may do surgery to remove the obstruction.

We also found that he has a harder time on his left side.  Whenever he is placed on his left side he gets agitated and his sats (saturation levels) go down.  The left seems to be where most of his problems are as well (such as the hydrocephalus and the cochlear issues). 

Our little guy is a fighter though, and continues to amaze everyone.  Here are a few pictures from the last few days.

 This picture was taken today, sleeping peacefully.  He responds well to both J's and my touch.  In fact, there was one point where every time we would take our hand off of him, his heart rate would increase too much and we would have to put our hand back on him to calm him down.  He also responds really well to both J and me.  J likes to give him a kiss on the forehead and every time he does, Kai will get all wide-eyed and just stare up at J.  It is the sweetest thing.  J had the camcorder yesterday and was talking to Kai, I came over and started talking, and at two different times he responded to my voice by opening his eyes and looking at me.  It gives hope that maybe he can hear, and if not, then he at least knows when I am near. 

 Wide-eyed and loving his head being washed during his bath.  Unfortunately, he didn't like the rest of his body being washed, but he couldn't get enough of it on his head.

 His foot and hand.  He has J's feet and my hands.