May 22 - Afternoon Heaven

16:20 -- I can't believe it, a little more than 24 hours from my last depressing post, I got to hold my boy!  What a difference a day makes.

More news from Dr. R. today.  I hadn't spoken with him since Monday and he popped in today while I was there.  I think he thought I hadn't been in since our last talk; I told him I trusted what he was doing and saw no reason to pester him with questions.  He said, "Wow... that's very trusting of  you."  Was he surprised because I'm a lawyer?   Who knows.  He reiterated (again) what our immediate goals are: first get him to gain weight -- how much?  "Enough," he said, then remove the PICC line in his leg, which should happen by the end of this weekend if he continues eating as well as he has been, then we focus on the ventilator.  He took Max off the antibiotics because the cultures came back negative.  He concluded the spike in temperature and breathing difficulty resulted from the too-aggressive ventilator tactics.  Fair enough, at least he's honest.  Dr. R. is keeping Max on the machine-controlled feeds to more slowly mete out the milk.  Too much milk at once distends his belly and messes with digestion.  So I got to hold Max from 14:15 to 15:45 while the milk was pushed through his feeding tube.That's enough from me for today. Phoo will be hospital-ing tonight and is on schedule to hold Max during his 20:00 feeding.