Dear Samuel,
Today, your mom and I saw you open your right eye for the first time. It was pretty cool, because we were there for the very first time you did it. You SHOULD have some big blue eyes, but it was a little difficult to tell. You keep working on the left one, but aren't quite there yet....hopefully tomorrow. I wish I would have grabbed my camera, but I was kind of caught up in the moment (I think you will understand).
Otherwise, it was kind of a rough day.
We are still fighting to keep your O2 saturation (sats) to stay within the acceptable range. The theory, before today, was that this was being caused by the infection you had/have. Now the hypothesis is that it may be your PDA in your heart that is open (More info
here). Now don't worry, this is a very common thing seen in premies and a lot of the nurses and doctors were surprised this wasn't open right after you were born. There are a few options to treating this: 1) Do nothing and see if it closes on it's own again. 2) Treat with medicine (you actually had this after the first few hours of being born). 3) Surgery (which would occur long down the road).
You are also still struggling with your blood sugar spiking. This morning when we were there your blood sugar was at 80 but when we saw you tonight it was up around 290. The working theory on this, is that the infection is still causing these spikes. However, they drew a blood culture yesterday and so far after 24 hours it came back negative......EXCEPT when they found the infection the culture came back negative after the first 24 hours and did not see it until 48 hours.
Overall, though you are still doing really well and we can't wait until you open that other eye!
One thing you do need to know is that there are A LOT of people who are thinking and praying for you buddy. To give you an idea, this blog now has over 11,000 page views in a little over a week.....That's nuts. It's really kind of overwhelming. Just know that you have a great family, great friends and a great community all rooting for you.
Sleep tight little man.
Love,
Mom and Dad
