Thursday update

Lots of news to share from Thursday. First off, Jacen is eating 70 CC's of a breast milk-formula mixture every four hours around the clock. He's happy at home, and his folks are happy he's there.

As for Nathan, every day of this process has been an education for many of us. New things come up regularly that are tough for all of us non-doctors to figure out, so we'll do our best to explain:

• Nathan is having the double line (venous and arterial catheters) removed from his belly button either Friday or Saturday. This line was being used to feed just about everything into Nathan's system, including his food before he received his feeding tube. They also fed blood clotting medication and antibiotics into his system, which were intended to keep the line itself clot-free and infection-free. The line is also used to keep a constant monitor of his blood pressure. Doctors usually like to leave these in babies for about 2 weeks, but Sunday will have been 3 weeks. Pray that the tedious procedure goes as expected!
• Nathan's urine output level was 130 CCs today. When we mention that number, it is taken over a 12-hour period. His input/output level was +22 today because he received another blood transfusion, which was done because his H and H levels were a little low. (Hematocrit being red blood cells and Hemoglobin being white blood cells).
• Dr. S will go over the results of the abdominal ultrasound mentioned yesterday with Kyle and Stephanie sometime Friday.
• Nathan continues to take his "meals" through a feeding tube, but those are now entirely made up of breast milk (30 CCs each time is the current goal), which he has been tolerating very well.

KEEP PRAYING! Thank you to all of you who have been keeping tabs on the Phillips' family and lifting them up.