Decisions.

We saw Max today and were greeted to a much more energetic little boy. His O₂ levels were still pretty low (around 23-26%) so there’s still the expectation that he’ll get stronger with his breathing and take to having the ventilator taken away so that he can do it on his own. It’s hard to say for sure though. We talked to one of the doctors today and the feeling was that we can either wait for him to “get on with it” on his own strength or we can try a 10 day steroid treatment in order to have it potentially quicken the pace to non-ventilation support. The risks with both options is that the waiting method can lead to developmental delays and lung issues in the future whereby the steroids can lead to similar developmental delays despite them having altered the prescribed treatment to be less problematic than the way they did it before. Brienne and I are to make this decision, but we are both still a bit muddled on the idea. On the one hand, I want Max to be off the ventilation sooner rather than later, but don’t like the idea of steroids being used if they don’t absolutely HAVE to be. The fact that we’re given a choice makes me think that both options are equally crappy, so we’ll have to ask a few more questions to get a better feel for what we feel is best for Max.