Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!

Well, Bobby's back (or slowly coming back).

He woke up in a fury last night, thrashing, attempting to roll over to his comfort position, on his tummy. In the process, he managed to mangle his arterial line, which is used to draw blood for blood gases and to measure his arterial blood pressure. Valiant (and annoying) efforts by several nurses and a fellow failed to repair the twisted a-line, so it was finally removed. Thank goodness! It's not really needed at this point, and it's one hunk of hard plastic that is no longer in his crib. My question, of course, is if it's not needed, why did several nurses and a doctor try to fix it, which resulted in my son screaming and crying? Grrr.

Anyways, the docs just rounded, and today's plan is to attempt to slowly wean him from oxygen, first by decreasing his nitric oxide, then by decreasing the percentage of high flow he's receiving. Yesterday, Bobby was on 8L O2 at 60%, and was doing fine. They tried to go to 7L, then back to 7.5L, and he started desatting into the 80s and had to get the oxygen blow mask. The day ended with Bobby back to 8L O2, but up to 80%.  As they wean the nitric oxide, the surgeon mentioned he might be a good candidate to go back on the Sildenafil (Viagra), to  help with his pulmonary pressures. Jokes aside, Sildenafil really is a miracle drug for heart defects. Bobby was discharged on it after his last heart surgery.

The Pedialyte feeds of 5ml per hour (1 teaspoon) will be upped to 10ml per hour, then later today, to 15ml. They proposed moving him straight to his Elecare formula, but I nixed that, since he has a long track record of having problems with his feeds - so much so, that he was refluxing badly when he was on the 2 teaspoons per hour of Pedialyte a couple of days ago. We will revisit moving to formula once we get his volume up on the Pedialyte. I'm glad the docs trust mama on this count, at least.

For now, the chest tubes are still draining, so they will remain. His morphine painkiller dose was decreased yesterday, and will remain the same today. They also agreed to remove the central venous transducer (another piece of hard plastic). Yay! The removal of each and every one of these medical devices, tubes and lines, puts us one step closer to home.

The surgeon also confirmed that we are still looking at a 7-10 day stay from the date of surgery, so possible discharge between April 27th-30th. Fingers crossed!