Evening Update (Tuesday 1/20)

I think this might be the longest Carolyn and I have spent away from the hospital. We called a few times over the course of the day and heard quite a din in the background. It seems that the NICU is full of babies right now. (The nurses report that Max wasn't one of the crying infants in the background). Max continues to have pretty severe reflux, but his breathing remains pretty easy. In addition, after last night's eight hour marathon session of being awake and uncomfortable, Max had a more balanced day today, with typical infant waking and sleeping. One of the residents phoned in the middle of President Obama's inaugural address to request consent for an MRI. Max had been scheduled to have one this week. I heard the new president in one early and the resident in the other talking about how the MRI lab was strangely empty and this was our golden opportunity to get Max in. This is just a routine evaluation that the NICU team does on all babies at this point in their stay, but my guess is that scheduling a routine MRI is hard because it's always getting bumped in favor of the emergency cases. The resident knew a good bet when she saw one, although I wonder if she quite knew why the demand for elective medcial procedures was so low. No word on whether Max actually got his MRI today. And from what I could tell, I'm better off waiting for this president's second inaugural anyway.