Bye Bye Granuloma

Mr. Hudson can finally breathe!!! As you all know the past week has been rather rough on the little big guy! After the bronchoscopy last Wednesday he was reintubated and breathing with the help of the ventilator again....but was extubated on Saturday morning. He tried to cry but nothing came out...poor thing..his vocal cords have been through soo very much....but he was breathing fine on his own with the help of vapotherm again....this time all the way up to 16 liters! Sunday he started to have a lot of trouble breathing again and the ICU team considered putting him back on the ventilator...but after going to 20 liters per minute (the maximum) on the vapotherm and starting IV steroids Hudson seemed stable enough to wait it out till Monday evening when he was scheduled for another bronchoscopy to address the granuloma obstructing 90% of his airway. Hudson is such a tolerable baby..he went without food for 16 hours Monday..then bravely went to the OR for another bronchoscopy. The ENT surgeon, Dr. Johnson, was able to debride almost all of the granuloma in the trachea and some of the scar tissue deep down at the carina (where the trachea splits to each lung). Dr. Johnson felt very confident about the results and feels that the remainder scar tissue should be managable through nebulized breathing treatments and future bronchoscopies. Therefore, Hudson is receiving respiratory treatments every 6 hours consisting of steroids, antibiotics and bronchodilators, etc. Dr. Johnson will then do another bronchoscopy later this week or early next week. As of today, Hudson is still on IV steroids and vapotherm but has been able to get back down to a vapotherm level of 8!! Now we just have to keep moving forward! More progress to come!!!