Stable, but not good...

I really do not have much progress to report today. Charlie has been pretty consistently stable the last few days. The steroids appear to be allowing his lungs to function better for the moment. He has his PICC line back in (this time in his head) and I think I mentioned in my last post that they got his Arterial line back in as well (both these had to be removed a while ago due to the presence of bacteria. There has still been problems over the last few days with air building up in his chest, which means that either there are new holes in the lungs or that the old ones have not yet healed.

Shannon and I had a pretty sobering discussion today with Dr. Martin, who is the head of Charlie's neonatal group. He relayed that although the steroids are doing their job of decreasing lung inflammation, the lungs themselves do not show any signs of improvement. Charlie's numbers are better at the moment, but regardless, his lungs continue to be in very bad condition. As Dr. Martin explained to us, the steroids are supposed to temporarily relieve the inflammation, so that the lung has a window to heal and be stronger when the inflammation returns as Charlie is weened off of the steroids. Dr. Martin said that he was very discouraged by the lack of improvement in the lungs since Charlie began the steroids about a week ago.

The hard part is that Charlie continues to be more active and alert, so much so that today they put him on yet another medication to keep him calm that essentially paralyzes his skeletal muscles. We asked Dr. Martin if all his activity and attempts to breath over the ventilator were good signs that he was doing better and he explained that it was a good sign that everything else is going pretty well with his body, but that if the lungs do not heal, the strength of the rest of his systems will be irrelevant. The ventilator that pumps oxygen into Charlie's lungs gives and oxygenates the blood gives the rest of his body the idea that everything is OK. So, he probably feels pretty well and consequently tries to breath on his own and generally seems much healthier. The really bad news is that Dr. Martin thinks Charlie's lungs are dangerously weak and have not yet shown signs of getting stronger. Even for a baby born at 26 weeks like he was, his lungs are much weaker than they should be. The ventilators are pretty hard on the lungs and are the only thing keeping Charlie alive at the moment, but his lungs just keep getting injured by the ventilator even at a sub-optimal, gentle input level.

Frankly, the summary of the news we received today is that Charlie is in a very dangerous place right now and if he does not start to make even some subtle progress with his lungs healing over the next 48 hours, Dr. Martin thinks that he might not make it. Also, he relayed that with how weak Charlie's lungs are, things could take a sharp turn in the wrong direction at anytime. Like I have said before, it is hard for me to make these posts when I have little or no silver lining to report, but I want all of you to know what's going on. I'm trying to not be unnecessarily pessimistic or frightening, but that is kind of what we were left with today after getting filled in on Charlie's condition. If Charlie's lungs begin to heal and can continue to do so, he does still have a shot, but Dr. Martin made it clear that his current state was pretty precarious. We are, of course, really sad about this but are still hoping for the best for Charlie today and for the rest of his life.

Here's a picture of him that my mom took last night: