Glenn Update #7: Day Two

Well, so much for that 8:30 p.m. deadline.  And so for much getting rid of the breathing tube.  Early last night, they were close to yanking the tube.  As if right on schedule, Ayden probably got a little too awake and got very, very mad.  He thrashed around quite a bit, held his breath, dropped his sats, etc.  In the process, he also managed to dislodge the IV that was in his ankle, causing him to bleed all over the bed.

In my opinion, all of this gave (some of) the doctors cold feet about the extubation.  One listened to his lungs, thought the right one sounded different - i.e., worse - than when Ayden first came up from the OR, and ordered a chest x-ray.  The x-ray showed some atelectasis in that lung, and we waved bye-bye to extubation.

Now Ayden is stuck in a vicious cycle - the very thing we feared the most.  He has to be awake enough to breath on his own or they won't pull the tube, but once he's a little bit awake, he gets mad because the tube is there, drops his sats, and we start all over again.  (My favorite book of all time is Joseph Heller's Catch-22, but I'm starting to like it less and less.)  To make a long story short, we are basically now battling Ayden to keep his oxygen levels up.  He wants to get mad and hold his breath.  We want him to relax so we can get the breathing tube out.  Unfortunately, these are pretty much mutually exclusive.  Catch-22, indeed.

The ultimate result is the decision has been made to knock him out for the day and "let him rest."  Thus, no extubation today.  Now, we get to worry about potential sedation withdrawal and, probably, throat soreness (due to the extended intubation) which will set him back on the bottle feeding.

Allison and I fear we missed the extubation window last night.  This is a cycle he could be stuck in for days, so we also fear we may not get another window for quite awhile.  We are exactly where we didn't want to be.  And we could be here for days.