Pinch me - I must be dreaming!

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!  We certainly have plenty to be thankful for this year and loved spending time with family.

Joshua has been doing well with his new PICC line and the original insertion site in his scalp has healed very nicely so no more concern with possible infection there.  The consistency of Josh's stools did not bounce back the way I expected after he was taken off the antibiotics for the wound infection.  The doctors now think we have hit a plateau with the amount of milk Josh's body is able to tolerate.  We have been stuck on a 45 cc for closing in on two weeks.  Instead of going up by 5 cc's every 4-5 days, it now seems we will be waiting at least two weeks for every increase to give Josh's intestines time to adjust.  Since at his current weight he needs to get well over 100 cc's to be considered full feeds, we have a long way to go.  David and I were getting very discouraged at the beginning of last week with our glacial progress and thinking about how many long months in the hospital were still ahead of us. 

On my way out the door to meet David to watch the Georgia/Georgia Tech game, one of the neonatologists stopped me to discuss how she thinks we need to move to the GI floor before going home so we can get to know them and vice versa since Josh will have follow up appointments with the GI specialists.  This is the first time I had heard about moving and it upset me.  We have become very close with our NICU nurses and doctors and have no desire to move to another floor where we would be forced to get to know a whole new staff and their policies.  I envisioned us finally leaving the NICU to a standing ovation with confetti falling all around as we wheeled Josh out of the unit.  (This is not likely to actually happen, but is fun to daydream about).  Our nurses were also upset by this suggestion and lobbied the other neonatologist, Dr. Piazza, to have us stay put.  It seems like we all got our way since we are staying put for the foreseeable future.  (For you Braves fans - every time I hear Dr. Piazza all I can think of is that scruffy Mets catcher that gave us fits for years, not the image you want for the person treating your child.)

Now comes the pinch me part - Dr. Piazza started talking to me about possibly going home by the end of next week!!  Seriously?!  Josh will definitely be going home with the PICC line and I will be responsible for providing most of his home healthcare including hanging his TPN fluids, changing his PICC line dressing, maintaining an infection free PICC line, and monitoring his progress as his milk and TPN levels fluctuate.  It is more than a little intimidating, but I would walk through fire to get home at this point so once again I say - bring it on, let's do this thing!  Josh will go home on fluids for 20 hours a day and off for 4 so in the beginning we will get 4 hours of freedom.  He will slowly work up over the course of months to being on for 12 hours and off for 12 hours.  And someday we will eventually get him off the fluids altogether.  I have no idea how long that will take, but it doesn't much matter as long as we can do it from home! 

I am not getting my hopes set on leaving next week.  Different doctors have different opinions and our head doctor is not returning until Monday.  She will be the one to make the final decision.  I have a hard time believing she will come back in the rotation on Monday and discharge us by Friday.  Just knowing our discharge is weeks, instead of months away, is intoxicating.  It really does not seem possible.  Now David and I are scrambling to get all of our ducks in a row at the house before the long awaited event actually happens.  It hardly seems real.   

Stay tuned for more details early next week!