Update

Little Quinn continues to make very slow progress. They began feeding him, through a tube, the day before yesterday, so now we're really putting our philosophy of "Breastmilk -- is there nothing it can't do!" to the test. Also, his preliminary EEG and CT scans revealed no evidence of bleeding, swelling, hemorrhaging, or seizure activity in his brain. That's good news, although it doesn't rule out developmental problems later in life. But I'll take a speech impediment down the road over a seizure-ridden infant right now.

The current difficulty is that the docs can't get him off the respirator for good. They made only their second attempt to do so yesterday, but after about ninety minutes he suffered another partially-collapsed lung (as of this morning, that problem has passed). Apparently he is having difficulty dealing with his own secretions, and thus he is taking mucus -- large amounts of it -- into his lungs. The current hope is that this is all still a side-effect of the large dose of phenobarbitol he was given last weekend as an anti-seizure measure. Phenobarbitol, we are told, can remain in the human body for a very long time, and his level is still quite high, seven days after that initial dose. The hope is, then, that once he finally gets that stuff out of his system, he'll be better able to heal.

That's where we are now.