An Ugly Day All Around.

While the residents of Middle Tennessee deal with the floodwaters outside, we are facing our own challenges inside. Today has been Ayden's roughest day since his surgery. I don't yet know if it's major or minor, but I believe I can definitively state today is a hiccup. I suppose it was only a matter of time.

This morning the doctors removed one of the drainage tubes going into his chest. This procedure went off without a hitch. For some unknown reason, however, when the nurses later began to switch out the dressing where the tube was removed, Ayden got very mad and went into supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). This is a fancy way of saying that his heart rate got really, really high - somewhere around 220 beats per minute (by comparison, his normal rate ranges from 140-155 bpm). As I understand it (which I really don't), the electrical impulse that tells the heart to squeeze basically gets caught in a loop, which produces extra "squeeze" signals. The team quickly got his heart rate back down (as they did the two previous times this has happened), so it wasn't a huge deal. Later, though, it happened again when the nurse was doing nothing more than repositioning him. Again, it was controlled, but they will most definitely now be looking into the issue (there's a cardiologist here in the hospital that specializes in this kind of thing). I don't understand there to be any real long term dangers with this, but it may impede his recovery progress. We were both in the room both times this happened - it's a little disconcerting to see the nurse hustle out of the room to go get the doctors.

The main problem today has really been that Ayden has seemed uncomfortable, or even in pain, almost all of the afternoon. Whatever the problem is has kept him from being able to rest, which is of great concern to me. One problem that we recently discovered is that his feeding tube had slid back up into his stomach - remember, they want it in his intestines - and had been dumping milk into his tummy for some unknown period of time. I suspect, based on my vast medical knowledge, this has been the source of his discomfort. He had never had anything in his belly before, so I think that caused problems, including maybe some acid reflux (which Allison will tell you is no walk in the park). He had been acting all day like he needed to cough. As it turned out, he needed to puke. Which he did. On me. This is how we discovered the tube had moved.

They shut off the tube and moved him back on IV. Since then, he has done better, though he's still somewhat inconsolable (I think he still has some milk he needs to throw up). They will x-ray to see where the tube is, try to get it back in place, then x-ray again. This is a common problem and will likely happen several more times before he leaves the hospital (he will probably pull the line out with his hand at least once).

There are other theories about his discomfort. One is that he might be going through withdrawal, as he was on a pain medication drip for 10 days while he had the breathing tube. They are giving him things now to more slowly wean him off - he had just gone cold turkey yesterday when they took out some of the IV lines.

S0, the day has not be as smooth as we would like. Allison and I just had to get out of the room for a while this afternoon so that we didn't get too stressed out. I have stood by his bed for probably 2.5 hours since mid-afternoon. At one point I was standing there for over an hour. The hardest part of the day for me hasn't been the SVT episodes, but has been the way he's looked at me - with a simultaneous death grip on my finger - as I've stood beside him this afternoon.

It's been a look imploring me to fix it, to help him, to do something.

And I can't. And it's the worst feeling I've ever felt.