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I got maybe another two hours of sleep, which I think made me even more tired, if that's possible. A friend with a one-year-old once described the exhaustion of having a baby as a special kind of tired: newborn tired. This puts it in a new category, kicked up a notch -- newborn baby critically ill in the ICU tired. And even though there's nothing physically stopping you from sleeping, sleep is impossible.

Husband just called. The doctors spoke with him after rounds. They decided against attempting the lumbar puncture again, since she isn't showing any signs of meningitis. They tried poking her twice last night and apparently since she was dehydrated, couldn't get it, and decided not to keep poking her. Poor little bunny. I know she can't feel it, they had given her a paralyzing drug (since she's intubated), but she's been through a lot in her short life.

Husband sounded a lot more optimistic when I talked to him, which I take to be a very good sign. (When even Husband the Nurse can't look me in the eye and tell me "don't worry, she'll be fine," you know it's bad.) She is still stable, and is improving. (I'm not sure exactly what constitutes "improving;" again, there's a very good reason I went to law school and not med school.) But they are going to try giving her milk today, and take out the catheter. They are probably not going to extubate her until tomorrow at least, because they want to give her little body time to recover from the trauma she just endured before attempting for her to breathe on her own.

Apparently the question now is whether the surgical team will do surgery right away. I'm through guessing what doctors will do, but I think that this episode is probably a good indication of what could happen if they leave this thing in any longer. If she doesn't have pneumonia this time, that doesn't mean she won't have it the next time. And there was something that Rambling Attending was saying about herniation -- basically the lung was squeezing out passed the ribs on the right side (the bad lung). So, that doesn't sound good either.

I dunno. The whole medical thing confuses the hell out of me. I didn't think the CCAM could "pop," and I thought that so long as she wasn't turning blue, things were okay. I also thought if she had an infection, she'd be running a fever, not turn cold. I really wish sick babies came with instruction manuals. This sort of thing is definitely not in Dr. Spock.

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