Well, we've been here 45 hours and I'm already starting to count the lines in the ceiling tiles. It's going to be a looooooong month, folks, especially the next few days. There's not much for me to do to help with Colby. I won't start my trach education/training until his first trach change (Saturday) and we go down to the TCC. I still suction his oral secretions, but the RTs suction his trach and do his cough treatments. Colby is doing great. He's had 3 blood gases, the results have all been fantastic. He had an x-ray yesterday post-surgery and one this morning. His lungs are clear, no signs of collapse or pneumothorax, which is ALWAYS a concern if you know anything about Colby's past respiratory history. Not sure what I expected going into this, but I didn't expect him to do this well. Everyone keeps telling me, Amy, he's healthy. He's not sick right now. I've also heard that as far as surgical procedures go, getting a trach put in isn't incredibly painful. By Colby's behavior since surgery, I would agree with that statement. He's on scheduled Motrin and Fentanyl as needed. I had them give him 2 doses yesterday and 1 today. About an hour ago when we repositioned him, he did seem a little uncomfy, so I said yeah, give him some happy juice. I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall. Maybe he'll breeze through all this? I'm praying so.
We all got some rest last night. Colby had a cough treatment at midnight, then after that I had them hold off until this morning. He's tolerating his cough treatments very well. Still doing them every 4 hours through the day. Not doing his shaky vest for another couple of days, giving the trach time to heal. Mom took the sleep room and I stayed on that pitiful-excuse-for-a-bed couchy thing in Colby's room. I know I shouldn't complain. I was able to be lie down and sleep. But hey, I gotta "rant and rave" about something, right? Can't bitch about Colby's care, it's been excellent. Can't gripe about Colby's progress, it's moving forward nicely at the moment. But don't you worry, I can always find something a little somethin-somethin that's worth protesting!
Went over yesterday to make sure our name was on the Ronnie Donnie House waiting list. I had called Friday once I had a surgery time. We are on the list, but she said it was be "a while" before we got a room. I said what's your definition of a while, 2 days? 2 weeks? She said maybe next week it would be our turn to get a room.
Oh, just in case you wanted to know, it's free pizza day in the parent lounge on the PICU. It's funny, I told someone it was LaRosa's pizza and he said, oh man, I love "Kings Island pizza". It's good, but no where near my beloved Pizza King, trust me.
Okay, I'll wrap up for now. I'm going to go for a walk around campus. I think the weather is good here today. Better get it in while I can because I hear it'll be 95 degrees in Cincy in the next few day. Yeah, Mama don't do 90-degree weather. I'm extremely happy to be reporting all's well in the PICU for now. Hopefully I'll have nothing to report but happy, warm and fuzzy news over the next few weeks, with an occasional goofy grievance every now and then, of course!
No comments:
Post a Comment