August 5 Update

Carrick has hit a bump on the road to coming home. Another eye doctor- the one Carrick will probably see when he's home- took a look at him today and confirmed what the other eye doctor said. The retinopathy in his right eye has indeed progressed to stage three. This moves him from mild ROP to moderate, but the doctors still don't think we need to consider laser therapy yet. We don't know if this will affect his vision later. The problem now is that the doctor wanted Carrick to come home on an oxygen tank that would blow 100% oxygen at a very low flow. This is no longer safe for Carrick's eyes so Dr. Mantilla says he is "not a candidate to come home" this week. The eye doctor will be back in a week to reevaluate his eyes. In the meantime, the doctor did mention that he wants to try and wean Carrick off of oxygen altogether since he can't come home on the tank. Will and I are reading between the lines here and believe this means Carrick will stay in the hospital until he comes off oxygen completely. Dr. Mantilla has not said or intimated that there is another option. We are pretty depressed about this tonight. It could take two weeks or another month and a half. He's having a lot of trouble coming down off of one liter flow- though the diuretic has helped in bringing him down to about 21-25%. But, some good news: Carrick will start on four bottles tomorrow! It will take a few days for him to really get going with it, but this is good. That's all for today. Please continue to pray for us and him. More to come.