Day 2: Onward and Upward!

First, we're so thankful and humbled by everyone's encouragement and emails. We're also indebted for all of your prayers, which we absolutely credit for the progress and hope we've experienced today.

We were able to see Luke this morning around 10 (and many times since), and while we were there the cardiologist, who informed us of Luke's heart issues yesterday, stopped by again to see the little dude. He said that he had a chance to look at tests run on Luke from yesterday afternoon and was happy to report that the right side of Luke's heart indeed appears to be shrinking. The more it shrinks, the better the valve will work and the less blood that will flow backward through the ventricle. His hope and our prayer is that it continues to shrink and the problem will fully correct itself, possibly within a matter of days! If Luke can get there, he'll be able to breathe even better and could theoretically be weaned from the ventilator. This of course would be a giant step forward.

Tomorrow (Monday) they'll get back to poking and prodding Luke and doing ultrasounds from his brain to his feet to see what else they can learn. This is all very typical stuff for a kid with some of his issues.

The best part of our day was the end of our morning visit. Since he was born, Luke has always had his eyes shut tight. Even his nurse said she had yet to really see them open, but while we were there, he woke up and opened his eyes for a few minutes and checked out the crazy world in which he finds himself. It's hard to tell his eye color, but with that tape on to hold the vent in place, I think he's kind of got a Colonel Mustard look going.

While we're hoping to spend as much time at the NICU as possible with Luke, we're also very excited about being released tomorrow, going home, being a real mom and dad, sleeping in a real bed, eating home cooked meals, and having the Golf Channel at our Bob's disposal just in time for U.S. Open Week.