Day Two

I brought the camera down to the computer room this morning to try to get the pictures on here, but I forgot the cords in the room. I'll try again next time.

Gabe had a rough night, so did I. The good news is that overall he's doing great. He's healthy and should have a lot of lines and some tubes removed today. He started drinking water and can move on to juice and his beloved rice milk any time. The drainage tube will probably remain in his chest for another day as there's been a fair amount of fluid draining. That brings us to our rough night.

I learned very quickly what the protocol is when Gabe's morphine wears off! The overal anesthetic wore of at about 11 last night and that's when he really needed the pain relief. But, the morphine level he'd been on was slowing his breathing too much (could it have been because of the combined effect of the residual anesthesia?) so it was decreased and my 11 to 7 nurse seemed to think it was best to try to avoid the morphine altgether. That meant that every 2 hours and 15 minutes to 30 minutes Gabe would start to get restless, sit straight up in bed (not good), thrash around, and cry. His heart rate would increase, his blood pressure would soar, and I could hear the fluid swooshing out the chest tube. The only thing that consoled him was an IV injection of morphine. His "I'm in pain cry" was always accompanied by the repetition of a word or phrase that had nothing to do with how he felt. Some of his cries were, "Bye-Bye, Bye-Bye, Bye-Bye", "Brycie, Brycie, Brycie", "I want, I want, I want", "Eesa, Eesa, Eesa", "Book, Book, Book", and "Wake up, Wake up, Wake up". Those phrases represent a lot of helpless episodes.

Finally, this morning I got the full attention of my morning nurse and the PA and Gabe has been put on an IV pain reliever that will last for six hours and the morphine will be supplemental. Hopefully, this will take the edge off. When he's awake and not in pain he's a calm, contented little guy. He watched an hour of Diego and Dora the Explorer this morning while I finally got some sleep. I get to sleep (OK, not much sleeping) in his bed with him and that has been a huge comfort to Mr. Gabe.

I'm heading back to be with Gabe and Keith and will try to get the photos of little mister up here later.