Cameron's Journey: A big day and a big post

In the spirit of Halloween, I wanted to share something I thought was really cool!! I love the movie Nightmare Before Christmas so I chose this song but this family does a bunch of others like Monster Mash and Thriller.

Anyways, the doctor did a bunch of things with Cameron today that I'm really excited about. First and foremost, he fiiiinnnnallllyyy took her off of the BiPap and put her back on the regular CPAP. Of course she's doing just fine with it as I knew she would, they definitely could have done it a while ago but they were just being cautious which I understand. They want to give her plenty of time and don't want to push her too far. He said it would be at least a week before he would think about taking her off of CPAP but I'm positive it will be longer than that for the same reason it took so long on the BiPap.

They drew a ton of labs to check a bunch of things that are routine at her age. Her hematocrit and other blood counts came back normal so they took her off the epogen! No blood transfusions for Cameron woohoooo!!!! These are SO common and rarely does a preemie Cam's age escape them but there are risks involved with transfusions so the doctors at our NICU like to try and see if epogen will work first because it is far less invasive. And it worked!!! As you can tell I am reeeaally excited about this :) She may need to go back on the epogen at some point but they say the older she gets the better it will work for her so I think it is safe to say we got through the NICU transfusion free!

We are making good headway on her feedings, they are increasing them in larger amounts and in increased frequencies. She continues to tolerate them really well. By Friday she will be getting all her nutrition through breast milk and get her PICC line out. This is big too because whenever a preemie has a PICC line there is always a threat of infection. So far she has remained infection free and as soon as her PICC comes out her chances of staying infection free greatly increase.

Aaaaand she is up to 2 lb 7.5 ounces, SO close to 2.5 pounds! She got her lasix today so no telling if she'll gain tonight but I really really hope she hits the two and half pound mark. About the lasix, her labs today showed her potassium getting low again so her doctor started her on another medication. The way he explained it to me, which makes complete sense, is that if they keep replacing her potassium, which they have to do through IV fluids, it defeats the purpose. Essentially they are giving her lasix so that she can get rid of extra fluids but then they are giving it right back when they give her the potassium. So what he did is start her on a medication called aldactone. This is a potassium-sparing diuretic, meaning it helps her get rid of extra fluid while preventing the loss of potassium into her urine. Hoping that works for her but I really wish this PDA would just close already!!

Lastly, how about a Cameron photo dump? I took a bunch of pictures the other day and she was just looking so cute I had to post them :) Don't mind the stuff on and under her nose, it's a gentle dressing they put on to protect her fragile skin from the CPAP mask. And that's her feeding tube if you didn't know.