Shift Change

Every 12 hours Lawson gets a new nurse/team of nurses. Sometimes they're nurses we've seen before, sometimes they're not, sometimes there's just one, and sometimes two (one training and the other learning). We've liked most of them and really like a few of them. And since Duke is a teaching hospital, he gets new doctors every two weeks or so. His 'turn' with Dr. Goldstein has finished and now his doctor is Dr. Tanaka. We have really liked both of them. One of the things I really like about Dr. Tanaka is that he always seems to have a plan. I like a plan! He wasn't at the hospital today, but he told the nurses to tell us that the latest plan is for the surgeons to get on the case on Monday.

Lawson pretty much stayed the same today. His vitals were steady and they came down a little on the ventilator settings. The chest tube went in without any trouble yesterday and has been effective at removing the air while the hole in the lung heals. The latest chest x-rays haven't shown a lot of changes in the blebs, so they've stopped the 100% oxygen. As I mentioned before, they're planning to have the surgeons take a look at Lawson's left lung on Monday. Dr. Tanaka feels that since the previous plan didn't help, we need to get more aggressive. One exciting thing to note is that they have begun feeding him my breastmilk through the gavage tube in his nose down to his stomach. It is only a very tiny amount of milk right now, but they're increasing it little by little. We're hoping that this will help him put on a little weight, since he's down to 5 pounds now.