Sun February 17, 2008

Naters Update 2-17-08Nathen is still heavily sedated and continues tobattle with keeping his blood pressure up. He is stillon the ventilator and still has all the drain tubesrunning from him. He now has three drain tubes plusthe one going down his nose into his tummy and the onerunnig from his feeding tube and also a catheter. Thatis a total of 6 tubes running from him to drain fluidsfrom his little body. They started giving him a verysmall dose of lasiks today to help promote hisunination to help get some of the extra fluids off ofhis body. He is now taking about 7 breaths above theventilator and a total of between 31 and 33 breaths aminute with the help of the ventilator. His body iscompletely swollen from head to toe, evenhis littlegenitals are HUGE and swollen. Dad said he looks likehe has a mango in his pants and says just seeing thathurts him. I can only imagine the pain. Thank God heis asleep for all of this, I would not want him tofeel the pain. He is doing better than he has been.Its just going to be a slow recovery. We are still ina critical time but every day he gets a little better.Once we have some of the extra fluid off he bloodpressure and his breathing should stablize more. TheDocs seem to say that we will probably be here atleast til the middle or end of next week and then whenwe get the breathing tube out we will go back toMemorial Sloan Kettering to finish his recovery. Dadand I are both a mess emotionally and physically rightnow. I am very glad we ahve each other right now. Itwill be very hard for me when he goes back hometomorrow and I am here alone in the ICU with Nathen.PLease keep praying for my little booger's recovery.We love you all Amanda