shockingly good news

Today we pieced something together.

The nurse we had yesterday, the one who said unpleasant words like "blind," "feeding tube" and "can't go home", well we think she's not a very big fan of home births.  And we think she gave us every possible worse outcome as some form of punishment. 

Because today James' doctor and multiple nurses all had wonderful things to say.  They said things like:
- he's greatly improved since they saw him on Friday.
- that his right leg, which many NICU staffers thought he would lose partially or totally (we were shocked to learn this), his right leg has healed in a way that is very "impressive."
- that they were pleased with his progress.
- that all his organs (skin, liver, kidneys, heart, lungs) were working well.
- that he was mostly breathing above the ventilator and may be off it in 24 hours.
- that his catheter may come out tonight because his kidneys are working so well.
- that his pulmonary hypertension is healing like it would in any normal, healthy baby.
- that they will begin weaning him off the blood pressure medicine.
- that the issues with his eyes were most likely caused by his medicine

Of course we still don't know about his brain, but Tuesday or Wednesday they will be doing an EEG (some kind of brain testy thing) and then later they will do a MRI.  Once that data has been collected we'll have a better idea of what's to be expected with his development.  And of course, there is still reason to be hopeful that the brain will "heal itself."  Since an infant's brain is still developing it is common for an undamaged area to do a task that a damaged area was supposed to do.

And then, of course, there is the miracle factor.  The Great Physician has already been healing my son in amazing ways.  Thanks be to God!

And thank you for praying!

St. James the Greater - pray for James!
St. Linus - pray for James!
Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen - pray for James!