Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down

After a string of progress, Taryn and I were greeted with the downswing of the NICU roller coaster ride when we visited tonight.  Calder’s pressure settings were back up to 24 and his oxygen was sitting around 50.  It doesn't

sound like a drastic change but when you’re rooting for progress the setbacks can fully ruin a day.  The Dr.s think that the PDA (Taryn’s mother's intuition at work) might be playing a part and the docs plan to do another echo-cardiogram to monitor the size of the PDA: is it growing, remaining stable, or shrinking. While we visited Calder’s oxygen levels swung widely between de-satting (de saturated) and hi-satting (hi saturated).  Low saturation is fairly obviously not a great idea for most major organs, hi-satting is a bit more nefarious and was not known to cause ill effects until they linked high oxygen levels in preemies to blindness.  Neither alarm (everything beeps!) is bad but stable is always better. He also had a "brady" episode, which means his heart rate dropped too low (bradycardia); this is considered fairly normal in preemies, but we're rather partial to it not happening.