The dialysis catheters are out!! They were taken out this morning and Memphis did great. For the first time in eight and a half weeks Memphis no longer has anything in his right jugular!
The nurses have him laying on his right side and off the left. This will be good for his head. Memphis had so much Edema in his head on the left side from laying on It so long. Now that they have turned him over and all the edema has shifted around, his head looks very swollen all over now.

An update on how Memphis' kidneys are functioning: Memphis' BUN number was 29 today and the creatinine was .5. We were told they wanted his BUN in the 20s which it now is. I'm not sure what they want the creatinine number to be but I will find out as soon as I talk to the nurse practitioner. The doctor says that his kidneys are functioning much better.

They weaned his scheduled Ativan to every six hours from every four hours. Memphis has still not shown any big signs of withdrawal which is great. Methadone is still on the back burner if he needs it.

The ventilator has been weaned some more today, his rate is now set at 22 and the o2 percentage is at 36. The magic rate number is still 12 to come off the ventilator. Memphis is headed in the right direction. If he keeps having good gasses (good oxygenation and co2 exchange) he may be able to get off the ventilator sometime next week.

So now that we have survived ECMO and surgery, there are now other things we worry about. The big one being the healthy growth of his left lung. Another big worry is healthy brain function. Being on ECMO brings many risks of down stream difficulties. He is now at risk for having cerebral palsy and other central nervous system(CNS) issues. We won't know weather or not Memphis will have any CNS problems until he is older. Having good functioning kidneys. Having a well functioning digestive system. All these things have been made difficult due to missing a lot of the normal developmental cues. For example, the sucking reflex that babies are born with is gone. This will make feeding from a bottle a very big challenge for Memphis.

I know many of you have been following Levi's journey as well. I wanted to let everyone know that Levi passed last Friday night. The funeral was yesterday at 1pm. It was a beautiful service. He just had to many problems to over come. He had a malformed heart as well as a malformed diaphragm. Each problem made the other more difficult to treat. Chris and I spent seven weeks getting to know Levi and his wonderful family. Our children were friends with their children.  They have touched our hearts so much, it is so sad to see a beautiful baby go threw so much bad in such a short time.