Sleeping with his eyes wide open

The HSC team compressed Max's feeds to 22 hours today. They seem very happy with how he's doing, even though he vomited a couple of times today. We're less enthusiastic about Max's progress because Carolyn reports that he's clearly in some discomfort. The HSC team were braced for much worse, though, with the dietitian saying that she had expected Max to be vomiting 60 ccs a day. With that possibility in mind, a little discomfort doesn't seem so bad.

Max also saw the ophthalmologist today. His eyes have been quite inflamed for the past week. Of course, this morning, when he saw the eye doc, his eyes were clear for the first time in several days (by the afternoon they were again pretty red). The inflammation appears to be related to an upper-respiratory tract virus that Max has been fighting for a while now.

The ophthalmologist cleared up a few other mysteries, however. First, Max's Georgetown records sometimes record him as suffering from ROP (retinopathy of prematurity). According to the doc, there's something called "ROP stage 0" which is perfectly normal. He assured Carolyn that Max doesn't have "real ROP" and won't get it.

We also learnt something about Max's disconcerting habit of sleeping with his eyes slightly open. This is not a problem; for example, it's not a sign of neurological defects as we had considered. It's also not all that uncommon. We're told it's genetic. Carolyn and I haven't noticed any sign that we sleep like this. Perhaps one of Max's uncles does?