More Progress on Day 10

A picture to tide you over.....

It is nice to see the tubes gone from the chest. Tomorrow they will attempt to lay off some of the sedation and work on weaning the ventilator. It usually takes, they say, 3 days to get off the vent and much longer to get off all the drugs he is on. He will go through withdrawal as most are narcotics. (and when I say a lot, I mean A LOT!!!) He has had two open hearts before and both with the same drugs so it took more of them each time.....A LOT of them.

We have an awesome nurse tonight who has been our nurse several nights ....so I will get good rest again tonight.

Keep the prayers coming....they are definitely being heard.

Progress...

The PA line and chest tubes are out. We had to put some paralytic back on board while doing those two things but it is wearing off once again. They will chill him out for the rest of the day and start backing off on the sedation tomorrow..ever so slowly. Also increase his feeds possibly to get the gut going. The also took out the pee pee cath....so we are in diapers now. (yeah)

The rash isn't any better and there was a few spots under the tape around the chest tubes that almost look like blisters. We haven't gotten any thing back from the cultures that were sent yesterday but should have preliminaries sometime today. We have a small fever once again as well.

Keep those prayers coming.

The 4-1-1

Hello my Peeps. (hee hee)

The night started out with a little fireworks of our own. Tucker kept his pressures even when very agitated before bedtime. They ended up giving him a TON (and I a mean a ton...morphine, versed, adavan, and some clorafil)of sedation to get him to calm down and sleep. Then his pressure dropped very quickly, as soon as it all hit his system. So it was up on volume and up on the dopamine, his blood pressure med. He finally leveled off and went to sleep. The doctor tonight said it was amazing how much sedation it takes T21 kiddos...and it doesn't last very long either.

He has been quiet all night since. We were put on antibiotics for the fever, just in case. (the fever is actually gone this morning) We have the start of a bumpy rash on our side, under our chin and in our diaper area. They are thinking yeast from laying in the bed..so some powder was ordered for those areas.

I believe the agenda today is to get all the lines out of his chest now that his is off paralytic. The longer they are in, the bigger the chance of infection. The urine cath will also be pulled today and diapers will be used. (thank goodness..that has got to be uncomfortable as well) As these things come off and there are fewer things to hurt the sedation will slowly be lifted. Then the ventilator will be chipped slowly away for extibation. All of these things are things to come....but we have made a huge step in staying off the paralytic!! HUGE.

Thank you everyone for the prayers....as Candi said. "god is probably saying OK OK, I hear you" with everyone praying for him.....and that is an awesome awesome thought.