It is now four days since Bailey was diagnosed with NEC and although he is not yet over it he is holding his own against it. Speaking to a nurse last night she said that as his bowel had not perforated by this stage, that she would be very surprised if it did now perforate. The perforation of the bowel which leads to peritonitis is something which, we are led to believe, happens in the early stages of NEC if it is going to happen at all. Numerous x-ray images yesterday confirmed the integrity of his bowel so we are happy that there is no other complication for the little man.

Nothing more has been said about the other infection that showed up in his blood cultures. This one, ESBL, is the rare one that I mentioned above. It appears from reading on the web, that this is a bug which appeared only 20 years ago and the existence of it is blamed on the perscription of antibiotics which were not strong enough to eradicate the infections for which they were perscribed. The bugs became resistant to the antibiotics and eventually mutated into one of the bugs covered by the term ESBL.

Overall Bailey is comfortable, he is still sedated though, to free him from the pain of his infections but that sedation has been gradually reduced over the last few days. His oxegyn requirements and the dependancy on the ventilator have fallen also, and this is very good considering that one of the effects of sedation is that the breathing is affected. Last night Bailey was needing the help of the ventilator at approximately 50% of the rate he needed it the day the infection took hold.

Many small changes in his condition, and changes which surprise the nurses and doctors in a positive way confirm our belief that Bailey is a baby who is in receipt of miracle after miracle. the ventilation requirements mentioned above illustrate this perfectly.