Day 3 for Dexter

Tuesday brought good news and a lot of hope. When I checked out of the hospital after lunch, we were spending time with Dexter and he was doing so well at breathing over the ventilator and his ventilator settings were so low that they said he was ready for extubation--removing that bothersome tube down his throat! And then the nurse said he'd be ready to try eating breast milk! After his chest tube had been clamped overnight, they took an X-ray of his chest to see if the pneumothorax had returned without. He looked good, so they removed the chest tube!! He was also successfully going down on his dopamine dose, meaning he was getting a little less dependent on it for keeping his blood pressure up. Since he was more stable, they also decided that he was ready for his MRI and they scheduled him in for the late evening. Unfortunately, they had to keep the trachea tube in for the procedure because he had to be completely sedated, and that was safer when there was a machine to breathe for him. But we were so encouraged--the day before, they had made it sound like it would probably be a week before he was stable enough for the MRI. We feel so grateful for answers to the MANY prayers that are being said for little Dexter.