More Progress

Last night I was reminded how important it is to ask questions.  I suggested to our nurse how much I wanted to cuddle with Quinn.  Immediately she wheeled in an adult size bed and let us sleep together last night.  It felt so good to be so close to him; however, he did just about everything but sleep! 

He is rapidly regaining his strength - last night he had trouble turning his head from side to side, but has remastered that skill today.  He unfortunately has had reactions to two antibiotics, one of which resulted in meds not staying down on a few occasions last night.  Despite this, he was in good spirits, and received both intravenous glucose and insulin to help maintain ammonia levels by removing any proteins from his digestive pathways.  Under this sugar influence, Quinn decided to alternate snuggling with play, and managed to pull his stomach feeding tube from his nose (which had to be replaced today).  He was also fascinated with his blood oxygen meter, which is essentially a red light attached to his big toe.  He thrust his leg into the air every 1/2 an hour or so to examine it after wrestling his sock off.

As a part of rebuilding muscle strength, Quinn went for a walk today with his nurse in his special physical therapy seat and a small wagon.  It was good for him to be out of the room for a short while, although he was very nervous at first as he's become quite suspicious of the intentions of the nurses as of late.  Here's what we saw on our brief walk in the hospital.  His floor is the sea turtle/ creature floor, and there are many beautiful artistic and functional works on the first floor.

Quinn started again on breast milk tonight, in the hopes that we'll soon find the right dietary combination to unlock his metabolism and work on getting that back to normal again.  We're so thrilled with his progress thus far and look forward to finding out when we might think about leaving the PICU.  Again, thanks for all your love and support.