More Summing Up

Ayden's chest tube output had slowed down to a trickle, so it was pulled this morning.  He got a dose of morphine for the pulling, so his nurse, Tara, took advantage of the situation and changed his PICC dressing immediately afterward.

As Allison said, now we wait.  He is on the diuretic regimen he will go home on (assuming fluid doesn't start to re-accumulate).  The real question now is:  how many days worth of unchanged x-rays will it take for Ayden to be discharged?  Two?  Three?  Five?  When we brought him to the ED last weekend, I was expecting to be here at least through the middle of the following week (i.e., next Wednesday).  The attending said during rounds this morning his expectation had been next Monday.  Time will tell who made the better guess.

***

After the tube was pulled, and after the PICC dressing change, Ayden gave us a little scare.  For some reason, his heart rate dropped down into the 90s and stayed there for several minutes.  (For perspective, his normal awake heart rate has been in the low 140s.)  We have no explanation for why this happened.  The least nefarious answer is he had an unusual reaction to the morphine.  They've already done a chest x-ray and an EKG to make sure something else isn't going on.  Allison and I will most definitely be "monitor watching" more than usual today.

***

And now for something completely different:

I didn't get turkey on Thanksgiving, but I did get sweet potatoes. And I liked them.

 

Ms. Margaret felt bad for hurting my feelings when she changed my chest tube dressing,
so she took me on a wagon ride to make up for it.

 

Mommy tried not to go too crazy with my door!

I got mail from Gran's class in Maryland!

Ms. Courtney! Okay, so it's funny.

I know Ms. Tara has her own little boy, but I'll always be her "sweetest boy."
She loves me so much that she lets me chart with her. I am good at charting.