Wednesday, October 7, 2009

October 6-7, 2009

It's a bit of an understatement to say G had a rough day yesterday. Wow! What a day it was...

After a somewhat peaceful night, and a little bit of an agitated early morning, Gabe was resting pretty comfortably when I arrived around 9:30am. Then all hell broke loose. I can't remember exactly what time it all started, but I can tell you that the madness lasted for hours and didn't end until about 6:30 pm. So Gabe woke up from his morning nap, in a not so fabulous mood. He wasn't happy awake and he wasn't happy asleep. Nurse "B" and I tried all of the usual calming tricks, but none of them seemed to work. We had some success wacking the side of the Boppy (Gabe like's motion, it calms him), but pretty soon even that didn't work. He got fussier and fussier until he had himself worked up into such a tizzy that even morphine and ativan didn't help. Arms and legs were flailing every which way; at times he was screaming (silent of course); and then the fever started. Gabe runs warm and is known to get fevers quite often. It's just one of his many quirks, or Gabe-isims, as Nurse "A" refers to them. If you notice him heating up you better get the blankets striped off and start cooling him, or else. We did just that, but didn't seem to make a difference and the fever kept climbing. He reached 39.2c, which I believe is around 102ish F. Whatever was bothering Gabe before was not worsened by the high fever, and now he was agitated becasue he was hot and was getting hotter because he was agitated and flailing. The final results were still not in, but it did look as though he had a UTI. If this was truly the case then this horrible day was probably due to the pain associated to the UTI. If it turns out he does not have a UTI, then I don't know what the heck was going on. I so wish I could have scooped Bubba up in my arms and bounced him around the room, mommy's always make everything better, but I couldn't. I just had to sit there and watch him go through all of this and it was heart breaking! I'm not sure what finally calmed him, but around 6:30pm Gabe finally relaxed. I was physically and mentally exhausted from the day, so I can't imagine what G was feeling like. I stepped out to get some dinner and when I returned G was snoozing comfortably. Thank God!!!

Gabe had a good night, and so far has had a good day. He is once again dumping a ton of fluid out of his chest tubes, which has caused his albumin levels to plummet. Yesterday they were 2.5 and this morning they were 1.9. Dr "B" wants to see him at 2.4 or over. That seems to be the magic albumin number for hydrops kiddos. Because of this drop they have upped his FFP to every six hours, instead of every twelve. Fingers crossed this does not make him puff. He has looked puffy over the last few days. NNP "N" did say that the puffiness could be associated with the UTI. It could be part of the infectious process. Let's hope that's what it is and will start to go away with the infection. Gabe has had good blood gasses today and they have been able to wean a little on his vent settings. Over the last week G seems to have taken a detour off the "right" path that he finally found a few weeks ago. Let's hope that detour is over and Gabe will start moving forward again.

I'm still exhausted from yesterday! What an adventure we are on...

1 comment:

Robin O said...

Still here, listening and supporting our sweet lil' man. Hey, no more detours dude!