Sunday Morning

Maddox had a better night. The doctors words "Maddox is still sick but he is better today than he was yesterday".

The drainage tube is still in, doing a great job of keeping his lungs clear. Maddox has increased his urine output (the worry from last night) but the doctor would like to see more improvement in this area. Around 11:00pm last night the doctor got the line in correctly, running toward his heart. This has helped a lot because they no longer have to poke him to draw blood, they can just draw it from the line. They can also put his medicine into this line.

The Respiratory therapist says Maddox is breathing some on his own, much better than yesterday. They will continue to try to ween him off of the machine today. He drew fluids to determine if there is a viral infection but he told me he really did not think that was an issue but it had to be ruled out.

The doctors are concerned that there may be an infection somewhere in Maddox causing all the problems. They are going to do tests today to try to rule this out. They may have to do a spinal tap to rule out some of the infection.

The biggest problem is that Maddox is very difficult to get a 'line' into because of his small veins. The doctor plans to try to put in an artery line in about an hour. They tried this 2 or 3 times yesterday and were unsuccessful. The doctor assured us he would not work on Maddox so long that it would stress him (this causes his heart rate to increase and his blood pressure to decrease). If they cannot get the line in today, it will have to be placed surgically tomorrow. This line helps them to measure everything more accurately going on inside of Maddox instead of depending on different 'leads' placed on his chest, tummy, etc.


My vision is for Maddox to continue to improve with the current medications, to begin breathing on his own, kidneys working properly, with no infections found. I am still holding the vision of having Maddox home (healthy) by August 1st.

Amy