Progress Update: Tuesday, Sept. 5

Truman is four weeks old today! He continues to recover well from surgery. Although still heavily sedated with pain medication, he appears to be acting like his normal self again.

Apparently, the distention in his stomach and bowel was causing more pressure on his lungs that anyone realized. We wrote in our last post that his ventilator settings decreased immediately upon surgery. By that evening, Truman had graduated from the high-frequency oscillating ventilator to the conventional ventilator. The prior ventilator sort of vibrated his lungs; this one operates like a standard ventilator. It was set at 30 breaths per minute on Saturday night and by last night was weaned to 25 breaths per minute. Sometimes Truman lets the ventilator do all the work, called "riding the vent," we've also seen him take as many as 60 breaths per minute other times, which means he took 30 breaths above the machine. Although these aren't necessarily productive breaths, he's learning!

He continues to struggle with getting off the blood pressure medication. His dosage has decreased since surgery, but he still struggles with low blood pressure and may do so until he gets bigger and stronger.

He already looks bigger to us and to his grandparents. He now weighs 1 lb, 10 ounces, but some of that is due to fluid retention from surgery. Ben's parents visited this weekend and had not seen him in about two-and-a-half weeks. They said he had changed dramatically in terms of color, size, skin, and general cuteness. It's amazing the difference that short time has made.

We still continue to be very worried about his brain bleed and what long-term effect it has on our little boy. He appears to behave the same as he did before the bleed, and it does not appear to have affected his personality. Hopefully, that's a positive sign.

--Kara