Alright, well I wanted to post an update even if there isn’t too terribly much to say. I guess it does include a prayer request. Basically we spent today trying to prepare Eli for being taken off of the respirator tomorrow morning. That entailed weaning back the pressure on the respirator to make sure he’s breathing on his own anyway, which he is, and giving him less and less sedative. Unfortunately, by taking away the sedative, you get a grumpy boy that is feeling miserable and uncomfortable. Of course, he tries to take the tubes out, so to add insult to injury, we had to tie his wrists down so he doesn’t pull at his tubes. We can tell he is VERY frustrated about that.
He has never been more awake than when he heard Uncle Dodo’s voice tonight. His eyes popped wide open and stayed that way for a while, although he was fighting sleepiness. Unfortunately, Adam got to witness Eli’s frustration at the worst. He wanted to move because he was uncomfortable, so I was helping him, but he also wanted his hands out of the restraints, which I couldn’t do. Finally he banged his fists on the bed and started to cry real tears (Eli, not Adam). That was hard to watch because it was the first time in nearly a week that I saw an expression on his face that I recognized as being uniquely Eli’s, and it wasn’t a fun one. However, it has to beat the first night when he was looking around slightly scared then finally closed his eyes and a single tear fell out onto his pillow. That one melted me.
I’m just trying to do my job of reassuring him and promising him that the tubes will come out as soon as possible. They want to get him off of the long lasting sedation so when the team comes in tomorrow, he’s not sedated. However, he’s so uncomfortable that they decided to put him on a short lasting sedation medicine. It lasts about 15-20 minutes, so they are just going to push him with that all night long. Then when they are ready to wake him up, they’ll just stop pushing that med and he should be awake within 15 minutes. Not a bad plan. Better than my plan, which was to have Adam read books to him all night because that seemed to put him to sleep beautifully. 🙂
Now he’s battling a fever and high blood pressure. His BP is not too high, but it’s creeping back up to where they decided to look into what meds he was on before because they might need to get him back on them. The fever is a bummer because it’s not really normal after 72 hours to have one, so that means there might be some infection somewhere that needs to be addressed. Tylenol and ice packs are doing the trick for now. Like I said, getting him off the respirator is the next big step. They couldn’t do that today because they heard a little bit of liquid in his lungs still, so they gave him some more medicine to make him shed that excess liquid. As a result, he looks much less puffy and more like the Eli we know (plus about 1,000 tubes). He was so swollen before that if you grabbed his arm or his leg, it was as hard as a rock. Now there is some “squish” to him, so it’s much better.
Well, that’s about it for tonight. A moment of silence for our Cyclones who fell to a fantastic Texas team and an “atta boy” for the Hawks who clinched a stunner against a top Illinois team. They needed a win. I’m sure there were plenty of people in the family lounge wondering why in the world I was watching an Iowa vs. Illinois game of all the ones that were on, but I didn’t care because I had the remote and they didn’t! 🙂 Thanks for all of your prayers, cards, and message board posts. I check in multiple times a day to get my “Message Board Support” fix. Tomorrow should be a big day! I hope you all have a good Lord’s day with some great worship.