| Its 3:30 am Monday morning and I just got off the train from Denver. Hope I can type at this hour? Ben is hanging in there. He has had a rocky few days. The main problem is that he is having a hard time converting oxygen in the air to his red blood cells in his lungs. Candy know some fancy name for it, but I don't remember. So he has been on a respirator full time since soon after birth. Then add in a heart murmur and pulmonary hypertension and he has the common package that they see in premees. Luther Hospital did a fine job for him, but after 4 days, he was not getting any better and his lung x-rays kept being worse. So Sunday morning they transferred him to Children's Hospital in Aurora (East of Denver). The ambulance ride was uneventful. Mugsy was discharged from the hospital at the same time. By 11:30 am Sunday, Dan, Mugsy, Cliff, Candy, Bob and Pat (the other grandparents) were all driving out to Children's. My 4 got there first by 90 mins and Ben was all settled in. We met the NICU RN, the RN specialist and his Dr all right away. We stayed till 4:30 pm and they did a noon and 4 pm chest x-ray and blood gases and they were better each time, so that's the first progress we have seen. Children's tweeked the respirator settings that Lutheran was using and that also seems to help. So just maybe ????, he has turned the corner. My four had only breakfast and were ready to eat our shoes, so went out to dinner near the hospital. That really hit the spot. Back to the hospital to drop Dan and Mugsy off (they had their own car) and Candy and I headed to the train station. I caught the 8:10 pm Eastbound Amtrak back to Holdrege and that went just fine. I got in 15 mins late. Candy went on out to the kid's house and was ready for bed. She had worked Saturday night and stayed up all of Sunday, so she was shot. I called Candy as my train was leaving the station to say we were out on time. Dan and Mugsy had just got home from the hospital. They met the night nurse and saw the latest results for blood gases. Again they were fine. The lady Dr who is in charge of Ben's care will be there each day for the next week, so he will have continuity in care. We liked the whole team just fine and that helps us for sure. So hopefully things are headed the right way and little Ben will come home and grow to be big and strong. The Dr sure thought so, and that's just fine with us. Candy will be in Denver thru 2/12. I have another Westbound train ticket for that Thursday morning and go from there. Time for a few hours sleep. Cliff |