the eric update – day 71: another transfusion. reduced reflux. reglan questions.

day 71: living strong with a new transfusion

pooh decided to put one of the yellow “live strong” wristbands to good use after eric finished getting his latest transfusion. as regular readers are quite aware, we’ve known for awhile that he’s needed a transfusion, so it was nothing surprising and it will go a long ways towards giving eric the energy he needs to bust out of the nicu.

interestingly, they did a special blood test to see specifically how many new red bloods cells he was making and it seemed like he wsa doing a great job creating new ones, but just not making them quite fast enough to keep his hemoglobin levels from slowly dropping.

day 71: burping in a big, blue hat

otherwise, eric had a quiet day. he gained a little weight, but most of that was due to the transfusion and fluid retension. his reflux problems were greatly reduced, presumably due to his new meds, but i’ve been given some reasonable information that reglan can often some with some nasty side effects. i specifically asked about it today and the nurse, who is very normally very responsive, sort-of dismissed the question and said that it’s just part of the normal nicu course of treatment for reflux and they never see any problems. we’ll definately be following up a bit more rigorously tommorrow to see what the thinking is, considering that his reflux is fairly mild ( although, it must be stressed that reflux in a micropreemie is nothing to play around with as it can quickly spiral into a host of other issues ).

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