"Regardless of how much patience we have, we would prefer never to use any of it."
James T. Obrien

Another steady couple of days for Isaac. He's been doing so well with the vent changes, so they kept going. He's down to 24 breaths per minute from 35 a week ago. His pressure is still at 6. Yesterday is when they went down to 24 from 26, and he's been desating a lot since then so they're not sure if he'll continue to tolerate it. If not, they'll have to bump him back up a little. Hopefully it won't be too much of a setback.

They started feeding him again a couple of days ago. One cc (about a tsp) of breast milk every 4 hours--isn't that crazy? Such a small amount. They'll do that for 5 days and then increase it if he's doing well with it. He wasn't digesting it yesterday so they switched him to a pre-digested formula called Pregestimil. He's been digesting that just fine. When they told me that the formula would be easier for him to digest I was baffled. I had no idea that breast milk could potentially be difficult for a preemie to digest. Who knew? It's not permanent however--I'm still pumping (yay). Once his system is a little more mature, they'll try the breast milk again.

It's been three and a half weeks since Isaac has been on the Ganciclovir. More than half way there. Crazy. This last week his white blood count has been going back up, but is still within the normal range. The lowest it was was 4900 and now it's 7900. If it starts to spike again it could mean he has another infection.

This past Monday marked the 6 weeks since Isaac has been in the NICU. 6 weeks! I don't really think about how much time is passing--I usually just focus on one day or week at a time. But once I realized it was 6 weeks I thought--Wow, time's really moving. Then I realized we're not even to the half way point. The third way point is more like it. Then I got depressed. Back to taking it one day at a time. :)

We're no longer quite the walking dead in our house--I've been well enough to at least get out of bed today for more than an hour. We're still sick, but at least I'm daring to look at the light that seems to be appearing at the end of the tunnel. Jonah's pink eye seems to be getting a lot better. I have it in both eyes--but beyond being itchy and not being able to open my eyes in the morning--it's not that bad. I'm hoping it'll clear up by the time the weekend is over. We'll see. Since it's so contagious, I can't go anywhere near Isaac until it's totally gone.

I've been up and down all week emotionally. Last night I about freaked out. I had been feeling better all day and dared to start hoping that I would actually get better someday, when my throat started hurting again. I about lost it I was so mad. I thought--not again. not again, NOT AGAIN! I don't think I've ever come so close to a breakdown. I've joked about it a lot--but I really almost had one and realized that there is a really big difference between thinking you're at the end of your rope (or joking about it) and then actually arriving at the end of your rope. I don't think I'll ever joke about that again.

My throat felt fine again this morning though--so it appears as if I actually am getting better. I have never been so sick in my life. I would prefer never to be again. I found a website a couple of weeks ago where a man after becoming pretty sick from a cold/flu virus had spent hundreds of hours gathering info about the cold/flu virus, ways to treat and prevent it. It was extremely helpful, but I thought he was nuts for being so obsessed about it. Now I completely understand. I am willing to do whatever it takes never to be sick like this again.