August 27, 2009

Another day has zoomed by and here I sit at midnight trying to remember the events of the day....hmmmmm...what the heck happened today?

Kayla and I spent the night at home last night and Jesse stayed at Ronald McDonald house. He spent the first half of the day with Gabe then headed home for the big kiddo-switcheroo. We have decided to take shifts with the kids. One of us will spend two days at home with Kayla, and the other will spend two days with Gabe, then we will switch places. It means less time Jesse and I will have together, but we have the rest of our lives for that. In our current situation we think its worth sacraficing time together to have better quality time with our kids. This also allows Kayla to live at home and get some sense of normallcy back in her life and we also get to spend some time at home ourselves, which we have learned is completely necessary to recharge the batteries. Every solider needs a night or two off the frontline to re-center before stepping back into battle.

Jesse was at rounds this morning so he would really be the best person to be updating you on Gabe today, but I have the computer so you're stuck with whatever tid-bits I can remember from the info Jesse passed on to me about 12 hours ago. I promise to provide a better report tomorrow. For the most part Gabe had a pretty mellow day. His heart rate was sitting a little hight at the beginning of the day and he had a bit of a fever, so the fabulous nurse "A" opened up his "box" (as Kayla calls it) and that seemed to cool him off a bit. His heart rate gradually lowered throughout the day and when I said goodnight to him at 11pm he was resting comfortably. Tomorrow at 5:30pm Bubba goes in for his head MRI. After spending 8 weeks on doses of sedatives and painkillers large enough to take down a small rhino Dr "B" thinks it's wise to take a look at G's coconut to see how things are working up there. The procedure itself should take about an hour, but with the small army it takes to transport him to-and-from the MRI room it will probably take closer to two hours before Gabe is back in the NICU and resting comfortably in room 3, slot "A." I did learn tonight that some bacteria was found in the fluid taken from the left chest tube. They are going to start G on some antibiotics until the final results are in. Noone seemed overly concerned about these findings and whatever may be trying to grow in there should be successfully knocked-out by the antibiotics. They will test the fluid again in 48 hours to make sure the bacteria is gone. The plan for the coming days is to keep weening the vent settings and by Monday hopefully get Bubba switched over to his cool new "big-boy" ventillater. Apparently due to his age and size he can now be moved to a different ventillater and they are going to try a setting that will assist him and not do all of the work. Fingers crossed this works well for him because that means we are on the path to no ventillater at all. Go Gabe, Go. We are still waiting for the final biopsy results...tap...tap...tap (that is me tapping my fingers on the table). The best news of the day is that Gabe looks the best he has looked in over a week. He has de-puffed quite a bit in the last 48 hours and you can really see his handsome little features again. I know I'm completely partial but he is seriously the cutest little boy I have EVER seen! I cannot wait to start dressing him in all sorts of cute, I mean manly (sorry Jesse), clothes. Well on that note, I bid you all good night. I am off to sleep on the awesome sort-of-mattress-airmat-thingy here at the Ronald McDonald House.