Jackson was successfully extubated to BiPAP yesterday. He is still alert and seems to be on the right path. The docs just gave the order to start his feeds again, as well as to slightly reduce his BiPAP settings.

This BiPAP ween is going to be very slow as he’s been on BiPAP or a breathing tube for six weeks and he has a tendency to get better then get worse.

Just to give you some perspective, Jackson has to be completely off BiPAP and doing well for at least 24 hours before he will leave the PICU for a regular room. The docs will make 1-2 changes to his BiPAP settings per day and eventually he will get windows of 1-2 hours off the BiPAP machine (and on regular oxygen) until his lungs are healthy enough to not need BiPAP.

Here’s your first look at Jackson during this stay. He was pretty alert yesterday and in a good mood so I put his glasses on and snapped a picture. He is intubated in the picture below and the tube coming out of his nose is his NJ tube, which is where his formula goes when he’s on feeds. We haven’t posted any pictures of him because he hasn’t looked this good and he’s usually hooked up to a lot of heavy duty medical equipment.

We are hoping whatever bug he had has run its course and he’s only going to get better from here on out.