Intubation Update #5: Nothing "by the Book"

We were told that they almost never pull chest tubes before they extubate. We just walked into Ayden's room this morning, and he has no chest tubes. Ayden does NOTHING "by the book." His nurse tells me he did well with the process, especially since she doped him before they did it. Apparently, he opened his eyes with a look that said, "What did you just do?" Then he went back to sleep. I am glad that he handled it so well because pulling chest tubes is supposed to be one of the most painful processes anyone can experience.

They did two trials last night to see if Ayden could be taken off the vent. The first one did not go well because he got immediately angry. The second one lasted much longer... he got angry at the very end. They are going to continue to do trials today, but we don't expect that his response will be any better. We believe that someone is just going to have to say, "Let's do it and see what happens." Like I said, our little one does nothing "by the book."