no mo ecmo

today (july 4th) the doctor decided to see how isaac would do if we took him off of the ecmo machine for 15 minutes. well, isaac did very well, indeed. his sat levels were quite high (98%) and they set the ventillator settings to 50% O2 and 50% air. when he got into icu initially he could never get past 92% saturation with 100% O2. so his lungs seem to be doing much better now that they've had some time to rest. yay.

the doctor seemed concerned about his heart as the ekg's were exhibiting some irregularities, and did an echo (an ultrasound of his heart) to see what was going on. he feared that maybe the adenovirus was attacking the heart. but FORTUNATELY, it was not. rather, his heart was reacting to the ecmo and was doing so by getting bigger. yeah, his heart's getting much stronger i guess. the downside of the heart's muscle becoming larger is the ventricles actually get smaller and therefore there's less blood to push to the rest of the body. i guess this is a problem? maybe not a huge problem but an incentive to get isaac off of the ecmo, just the same. especially since his lungs seem to be much better. more especially since there seems to be no more benefit of him being on it.

so tomorrow morning (tues morning), they're taking him off of the ecmo gizmo.

we're not sure how long isaac will be on the ventillator. but while he's on he will still have to be sedated.

what with all the sedatives and morphine he's been on the past week and a half, the doc's are saying he's quite addicted and will require methadone to wean himself of his habits... habits. yeah. like he had a choice.

ok, then. i'm sure i'm forgetting lots of salient details here... but i'm gonna end this entry now. you get what you get. lucky you.

and isaac, keep up the good work. you lovely little boy, you.