The Plan

Slowly more
and more
and more
and even more
tubes and wires are disappearing.
Ahhhhhh
so nice.

It's day 16 here in PICU paradise.

He is doing so
so much better.

There are some issues they are still working on.
His lungs are still angry
he is still dumping way too much fluid out of his chest tube
and some of his levels
sodium
potassium
cortizol
blood pressure
are off.
Way off.

By far at this point the most pressing issue is that his one remaining chest tube continues to dump out fluid.
That's not good.
At 6 days post-op it should already be out...
long ago.

Today during rounds the talk became that if that drainage(the source of which is the fluid around his heart)
does not being to taper off
they may need to do another heart cath
to take a look see and make sure there aren't any remaining collaterals that are still trying to live on
which would explain the bleeding/fluid output.

Ugh.

Another cath means another intubation
another day of anesthesia
another day of puke from the anesthesia.
Just when we have gotten him to eat and drink
and keep it down
we may have another 24 hours of yuck.
Boo.

No decision has been made yet
they are going to give him another day to see what happens
but it is becoming more and more apparent that something is going on.


In better news,
with each xray his lungs look better

 

are they not the cutest little lungs you ever did see?
No?
Ok.
Let me show you the outside picture of those little lungs:

There.
Now you can see the cuteness.

This is day two of sitting in a chair.
He is ridiculously excited about this
as you can plainly see.

Ok.
Maybe not.

We had quite the drama yesterday morning when after morning rounds the doctors moved on down the hall when he suddlenly started going down.....fast.

His oxygen levels which had
10 seconds ago
been at 94
began dropping
quickly
85
78
74
72
69
Yeah.
Not good.
The alarms were once again ringing and his itty bitty room was full of people again.
His surgeon
His cardiologist
every resident and nurse on the floor.
Down
and down
and down
After an intense few minutes someone finally figured out that the respitory therapist that had just been in had accidentally turned the oxygen valve in the wrong direction....
she turned it off instead of increasing it as they asked her to.
Alrighty then.
So now we know that he is not yet able to maintain adequate levels without the use of oxygen.
I'm not sure that's the way we wanted to find out.
But we know.

It does strike me as incredibly ironic however
Pre-surgery we would have been jumping for joy to have levels of 69!
But now that all is fixed/patched/rewired he should be able to....
or will be able to
maintain more "normal" levels in the mid 90's.
But right now his lungs are just not cooperating fully.

So that's the what's what.
Better.
MUCH better.
If I was betting lady I'd say home Friday?! Saturday?

But if they have do another cath and shut down some collaterals then all bets are off.
Boo to the hoo.