That brings me to today's big news: Dade has done a great job holding his CO2 levels, so barring anything crazy tonight, he's coming off of ECMO tomorrow! They'll remove the ECMO machine, and will turn up his settings on the ventilator. They'll also leave in his cannulas (tubes in his neck where the machine connects) just in case he needs to go back on. It's simultaneously exciting and terrifying. We've been trying to get back to this point for almost 3 weeks, and of course want him off of it as soon as possible, but things didn't go so well last time. However, Dade is 3 weeks stronger now, and isn't 2 days past a major surgery where his insides were literally rearranged, so we're claiming that it will be different this round. That doesn't mean we won't have some rocky days after this - we absolutely will - but we're praying for God to keep Dade off the machine! Another thing to note is that his room will go into virtual lockdown for awhile as he goes back under Minimal Stimulation orders to keep him from getting riled up. That will change once he's more stable, but until then, his room will be a very quiet, very calm cave as the nurses put it. Tara and I won't even be able to interact with him much while he's stabilizing. That also means that Dade can't have visitors for a little while. Again, we're not sure how long that will last, but we'll let you know when that embargo has been lifted. The way we see it though, we'll give him any amount of time he needs without stimulation so that we can have much, much more time with him later.
I'll update tomorrow as I can, but please understand that tomorrow is a big, big day in this whole process, and that the next several days will be critical for Dade. We may be a little hard to come by as a result.
We love you all!
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