September 11, 2009

Today was not a good day for Gabe. On the puffiness scale, G didn't look any puffier then yesterday. His ears actually looked a little thinner, so perhaps he is on the road to gettin' skinny again. Unfortunately this was just about the only good thing we can report about Bubba today. When Jesse arrived in the morning G was agitated, his CO2 levels were still high, he was retracting like crazy when he took breathes, and he was requiring PRN's (extra doses) of morphine and ativan. An x-ray was taken to see if his plural effusions were not draining, which would put pressue on his lungs, but they actually looked a bit better than yesterday and are not draining as much as they were earlier in the week (fingers crossed he is beginning to "dry-up"). Dr "B" was curious if perhaps the vent setting was not right for Gabe's current needs and if he needed to be switched back to the other vent. His newer "Big-Boy" vent is able to be changed over to this other setting he felt was more appropirate for G, but is had to be manually changed and no one was quite sure how to manually adjust the vent. Instead of messing with settings they opted for changing Gabe back to the other vent. We were a little concerned about this change because G seemed so agitated, most likely due to air hunger, on the other vent, but it was worth a try. They got him switched over, made a few adjustments to pressures, and what do ya know? He started breathing better and over time his CO2 levels begin to drop. At one point G was so comfortable that he nodded off and let the vent do most the work for him. Poor little guy had a rough day and was exhuasted.

I showed up around 6:00pm and Bubba was still resting comfortably. We stepped out to grab a bite to eat around 7:00pm, at which point Gabe was starting to wake up and was not very happy. We thought he might just need some suctioning and was possibly a bit upset by the noise level in the room. He is very sensitive to noise and it always gets a little louder at change of shift for the nurses (7:00 am and pm). When Jesse got back from dinner, Gabe was just plain old pissed off! He was running a fever, squirming like crazy and crying, well maybe screaming would be a more appropriate description (all silent of course because of his ET tube). Jesse and Nurse "S" pulled all the tricks out of the bag, but none of the usual things seemed to be working. Some blood tests were run to see if he could have an infection. I believe these came back negative. They even took another x-ray to make sure his lungs weren't compromised, and the x-ray looked ok. After trying everything they could possibly think of, Nurse "S" decided it was time for some extra "happy juice." After some morphine and ativan Gabe seemed to calm down. Fingers crossed this does the trick for him. It's times like these we wish, more than ever, that we could pick our little boy up and snuggle him. A snuggle makes everything better.