Inching forward...

I talked to Dr. Martin this morning and his words were exactly that. Inching forward. He also said that Charlie is where he had hoped he would be after the last 48 hours. So, Charlie's condition is slowly becoming less and less precarious. The x-rays have shown slow improvement in the lungs, especially the right lung. The left lung has continued to be overinflated, but that too is slowly subsiding. The doctors have been able to slowly lower the ventilator settings and still get acceptable blood gas results, which means less pressure on and less possible damage to Charlie's weak lungs. Regardless of the continued lung weakness, the lungs are definitely working better (at least at oxygenating), because Charlie is currently being ventilated with "room air" meaning that they are not needing to supplement his ventilator with extra oxygen. Dr. Martin says this is a good sign, but more importantly it may give them a chance to further reduce Charlie's ventilator settings.

The only setback during the last 2 days is that the doctors now think Charlie may be developing a fungal infection. More than likely this is occurring because the antibiotics and steroids give the fungus an ideal, non-competitive environment in which to thrive. It is very common, consequently, for preemies like Charlie who are on those other medications to develop fungal infections. So, although it isn't a positive development, the doctors are not surprised by it and seem pretty confident that anti-fungal antibiotic medication they started him on today should clear things up quickly if in fact it is a fungal infection.

So, we've made it through the 48 hours with subtle improvement, which is really the best Dr. Martin was hoping for. It doesn't mean we are even close to being out of the woods, but we've inched a couple of inches closer. I'll try to post again soon with more details, but I wanted to quickly share the good news.