Sunday....

I can't believe it is Sunday. I guess Saturday ran into Sunday so quietly that I was too busy to notice.

Last night was a bad night. It seemed like once Thayne and the boys left time just began to drag on and I felt like a deflated balloon. One one hand I was glad that Thayne would be home to manage the house and be there for the other little ones. On the other hand, I felt like I was left alone to deal with the ups and downs of Nathaniel's care. And that is what it truly has been. One minute it looks like things are going good... the next I am holding my breath and wondering what horrible thing they are going to tell me. I hate it when doctors say, "I've never seen this before!" All night I heard that from the doctors and nurses when talking about his chest tube. What it all came down to was that the tube is draining, but air is getting into the space it isn't supposed to.... technical term would be something like, 'A pneumothorax or collapsed lung is causing issues because of the accumlation of air in the pleural cavity because of the pneumonia'.... basically the lung is damaged from the pnuemonia and air is getting between the lung and the lining of the lung and is compromising his breathing even more. So 3 chest x-rays later in the middle of the night we were able to decide that he would sleep on his stomach with his head inside an oxygen tent (I told the kids earlier that I was going to keep Nate in a plastic bubble so nobody can get him sick again... I took pictures to prove it to them!!!). The tube has continued to drain and with Nate on his stomach it manages to get the air out too. He is so bloated. So much protein is going out with the fluid from the chest tube that he isn't making enough protein to urinate all of the fluid being put in him through the IV. He's double his normal size. They tell us this is all very normal for how sick he was. But it doesn't feel normal. We tried to feed him some gatoraide but he didn't want anything to do with it. I just can't wait for him to turn the corner and really start healing. I want my baby boy to smile again!!!