July 23, 2009

Today was Gabe’s big lung cleaning day. It started off with the doctors removing his ET tube and replacing it with a larger and cleaner one. The reason for the larger tube was to accommodate the fiber optic camera that would go down it. As a paramedic not many things bother me, but as a father it was hard to watch them try a couple times to get the new ET tube in his airway. It’s difficult to stand back and let your kid not breath and not be able to do anything about it. After the new ET tube was secure, the pulmonary team stepped in and inserted the camera to see what they could find. They immediately encountered secretions when they turned the camera to look down the left lung. They would continue to clean out his lung as much as they could before they decided to give Gabe a break. Gabe was a little trooper and was able to do the procedure with his normal Morphine and Versed cocktail and not have to be paralyzed. The pulmonary team gave Gabe some mucus de-clogger called Mucomist which he will continue to get over the next few days. After the team was done, they were able to hear junky lung sounds in Gabe’s left lung. But at least they were lung sounds. Woohoo!! The pulmonary team will be back tomorrow to reassess whether Gabe will need another bronch procedure.
W e also received some great news from the Genentics team. Gabe’s test looked great and there was nothing wrong with his genetic makeup. Except that the poor fellow is my son and you know what that means – a little Jesse running around.
We also got Gabe’s ultrasound results from yesterdays look at his abdomen and the two tumors on his liver. We were not shocked and were expecting to hear what we did. The tumors on Gabe’s liver are growing, just like he is. But the good news is that we are heading in the right direction getting his lungs on track and then we can get down to the MRI room and find out what is going on with these tumors.