Wednesday, December 7th

Will is taking longer than expected to get off the ventilator. He got down to a rate of 10 two nights ago, but he didn't handle it as well. His C02 numbers were increasing and his respiratory rate was too high.

So, they started raising his ventilator rate and it topped off today at 24. His doctors started to worry that he might have some sort of an infection because he was also running a slight fever this morning. (Which may explain his needing a higher ventilator rate.) They took all sorts of cultures... urine, blood, etc. Most of them may take 3 days or so to come back, but the initial results have come back negative for any infections.

This evening things have started looking up because he no longer has a fever and his last 2 blood gases have looked really good. So, if everything continues to go well, they will begin to reduce the rate on his ventilator. I'll let you know how it goes!