We Had A Great Night!!!!!

I'm extremely excited (but still cautious in my optimism) that we had a great night last night. I stayed up until about 3am and as I was hitting the hay, Oakes was stable and his numbers were good overall. The labs had stabilized, which was good. I woke up at 5am and everything was the same, which is great! The only thing that they remain concerned about are his "lactates" (as in lactic acid). They are higher than they'd like them to be, but Mary, our nurse keeps saying that he looks great and you wouldn't know the lactates are coming in high just by looking at him.

Of course, the omnipresent Dr. Huddleston stopped by around 6:15am this morning. It was uneventful which is exactly the type of visit we like! This would be in comparison to last night around 8:52pm when he stopped and lingered for about 20 minutes as they tried to figure out how to bring Oakes' blood pressure up.

I just listened in on rounds and all of his numbers are good. Dr. Oren, one of the attending Physicians here at the CICU, is concerned about the lactates, but not alarmed yet. He said it is to be expected. I guess considering Oakes was being dried out so much pre-surgery, it just seems to be taking his body a while to "catch up" and start disposing of these extra liquids. One thing did occur to Dr. Oren as they discussed his lactates and that is that he wants to check Oakes' liver function. He said it's possible that his liver may have been irritated from being on the bypass machine. If that's the case, then that would be the reason his lactates are up and then they'd know better how to treat it. If good liver function, then they may elect to start Oakes on diuretics to dry him out, just as they did pre-op.

Connie is on her way up here and the nurses are switching shifts. Courtney will be with us until 7:30pm tonight.

All is well here, so we're just praying for a smooth, comfy day for Baby Oakes!!