Saturday in the Park (er...Hospital)

Bobby continues to recover nicely. He just started his first feed since surgery - he gets 10 ml (1/3 oz) of formula every hour through his feeding tube. Not much, but they will increase things pretty quickly if he does well.

He's staying awake for longer and longer periods of time, showing off his bright blue eyes. He's obviously uncomfortable but is being very brave. Much much braver and more tolerant than I would be.

He had a xray yesterday that showed that his upper right lung wasn't working great. It hadn't collapsed like last time, but the air sacs weren't fully inflated. He is getting some respiratory treatment every 4 hours where they put a little vibrator on his chest and back to break up any congestion. Then he gets a dreaded suction. Its hard on him, but it is working very well. This morning's x-ray looked great.

Our major concern is that his oxygen saturations are still a bit low. They went down to the high 60s this morning. They think its caused by a couple of things - Bobby's breathing is a bit shallow because its painful for him to take deep breaths with a broken sternum and his lungs are still mad about the bypass surgery.

The doctor ordered a bolus of 40 ml of saline solution to be put through his artery. When I asked the nurse why she was doing this she said it was because Bobby was 'shunting'. When I asked what 'shunting' was, she responded with an answer that made me question whether she really understood what shunting was. Comforting. But he immediately relaxed after the saline went in. Apparently it fixed the 'shunting'. Later, she gave him a big dose of morphine to help him relax and he's floated off to la-la land.

Lest I complain too much about my nurses, I should say that we have had the Mary Poppins of nurses the last 2 nights. She largely took over the respiratory treatments last night, and that made a huge amount of difference in the junk that came up from his lungs. Chris has been a nurse over 20 years and the experience shows. Every time I woke up in the night she was standing over the crib, caring for him or just comforting him. I'm in awe of how she moved him around and how comfortable he is with her. With her help he sat up for a few minutes last night.

I helped her give Bobby a bath. It was wonderful to touch him. It's so hard to be close with all the wires about. Speaking of cleaning up the Bubs, we had a little scare yesterday when Valerie found a brownish-gray growth on Bobby's scrotum. The nurse didn't know what it was. The APN checked it out and identified it as just a bit of residual betadine from the surgery. False alarm. But it reminded me of when Bobby was first born and I asked the nurse about a little brown spot he had growing on his pee-pee. She was very kind not to laugh at me as she suggested it might be a little dab of poo.

For all this, the doctors are optimistic about his progress. If all goes well with the feeds we'll move towards having his chest tubes removed tomorrow or Monday. That is a very exciting time because we will then be able to hold him.