Skip to main content

Post-Op Day 6

And today we learn about withdrawal. Somehow the picture that comes to mind when I hear this word is a nappy drug addict looking for a fix, not a crying, trembling, sweating baby. Especially not my baby! Since they took Leo off the sedation and the other narcotics after his extubation yesterday afternoon, Leo has become more and more irritable, and today he was quite miserable until we figured out what was going on. The docs were hesitant to go straight for a wean from the meds since Leo was only on them for 5 days or so. Even though he is tough, he's proving himself to be sensitive to meds. Now he is on a very slight wean, just to help him get over the hump. After a long day of tears he finally settled down after a dose and was peacefully sleeping when we left the PICU tonight. Whew, there is always something! The human body is such a delicate instrument, most of medicine is just fiddling around to find the perfect equilibrium.  Anyway we are hoping that this will be the worst of the pain etc for our guy, and that now the road can only go up! Tomorrow they are planning on doing another quickbrain MRI and CAT scan to check on the progress inside his noggin.
Here are some pics from the day. (Check out the perfect forehead on the profile shot...the swelling is really going down. Although they say the swelling will last probably another three weeks or more.)






Comments

  1. Calories and CoffeeJuly 2, 2011 at 10:03 PM

    I'm so glad he's doing better tonight! I hope things continue to just get better from now on!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JaniceJuly 2, 2011 at 10:45 PM

    Leo looks wonderful! What a beautiful little boy!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 2, 2011 at 10:50 PM

    You are all such warriors! The prayers continue as does our love.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gary JonesJuly 3, 2011 at 6:33 AM

    Thanks for the pictures...they are wonderful...he is looking better each day...Leo is still in my prayers

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJuly 3, 2011 at 4:09 PM

    Doll face!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

With Mixed Feelings

So for the past couple weeks my feed has been filled with the "back to school" and "end of summer" and "beginning of parental freedom from their annoying offspring" photos. It's ok, I totally get it. Another year, another back to school pic, another notch in the door jamb, and another chapter of growth and development with junior. Look at him go! Or not, as the case may be for many children. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease control and Prevention) one in six children has one...a developmental disability. A stamp of "not normal" across their foreheads. A number. A check mark in a box. My kid is one of them. I heard a brief segment on NPR that enticingly started out with the title of developmental delays on the rise, a 17% increase over the last twelve years. And though I turned up the volume the segment only talked about how it's probably only due to poverty, and it's only the upper classes that actually pursue diagnosis...
34 comments
Read more

Putting The Lion Back Into The Wild

I'm actually home tonight while the 'boys" are at the PICU for what could be, maybe, possibly, our last night. It's almost hard to believe that we could go home. It's like those animals who have been in captivity who are finally let out almost don't know what to do, and often cower in fear and confusion in their cages. We would be cowering, but that sounds like it takes too much energy. We are completely exhausted after ten days of this shunt malfunction marathon.  Yesterday afternoon Leo had the hopefully final surgery to fix his shunt. The Neurosurgeon replaced all the tubing and tunneled a whole new channel for it as far away from his lungs as possible. During which he discovered that the connection between the tubing and the shunt valve was leaking and welling up CSF as he was examining it. Also his old tubing was inserted pretty high under his breastbone which often can jeopardize the integrity of the surrounding tissues; in other words, the plu...
8 comments
Read more

Kinda Like 'Nam.

First off, sorry about the disjointed nature of the posting from yesterday. I was updating via text messegaing from my phone and because the service is patchy in the hospital not only were the posts chopped up but they were frequently out of order. You have to be a sleuth to figure it out. On the other hand, I guess it was a direct reflection of what we were experiencing! Between getting little bits of info and there, we had no clue what was going on. This is what we have been able to piece together since yesterday. The surgery itself was a definite success, though there were a few surprises. One of which being that when they took out Leo's shunt of 8 months they discovered that it was not working. Huh??? He never showed any symptoms of shunt failure and brain compression, so what the heck? In between the sobering list of items now holding risks for our guy, the nuero surgeon dropped this little bombshell on us. Does that ...
18 comments
Read more