DOL 42

Hey everybody! Big doin's over here at the hospital. I'm moving tonight! Can you believe it!?!? I'm heading out of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to the Special Care Nursery. This is a step-down in terms of the intensity of care that is administered. The nurses keep saying that I don't need the NICU-level of care anymore because I'm not "sick". I'm just little! I'm just a little guy....so small that I hit 4 lbs overnight!!!! How's that for little?! I'm really growing now. They are probably going to decrease the amount of calories that I'm getting soon. They don't want me to get too big, too fast. Hey, I'm happy as long as they feed me every 4 hours...

So I feel like I'm graduating today. I'm out of the NICU and off to the Special Care Nursery. My mom and dad are going to love it! Plus, they'll be bottle feeding me before they know it (which we are all looking forward to...with this tube I hardly taste anything!)

I also had my blood tests done yesterday. They came back great! My "crit" levels are moving up, which means that my little bone marrow's doin' what it's supposed to! This is fantastic. It's up to 28 and change, from 26.2. As long as it keeps trending up, I'm hoping this means that I will have avoided any blood transfusions. That's great!

Oh, and I got my first eye exam done today. I'd be lying if I said this was no big deal. I hated it!!! But, it's a necessary evil. And the results were "so far, so good". Unfortunately, I have to have another one of these in a couple weeks, but hopefully that gets positive results and I get to be finished with those tests!

It's getting close to Christmas, so I want to thank everyone out their thoughts and prayers. With all of your help, I've been doing really well. While I wish that I were headed home for the holidays, I'll bet I won't remember any of this in the years to come. So, I'll just pretend that next year is my first Christmas! This one is just practice! Merry Christmas!