3/12/06

Zonked again.

They've been keeping the bandage off of his incision site too since it's healed so well. It looks a lot better than I thought it would. Not so hideous after all. It still has betadine and skin glue on it, so this isn't quite what it will end up looking like but not bad anyway. Too bad the picture came out so damn blurry that you guys can't really see it. The red mark above that is where the tape has irritated his skin, the bandage there, with the red tube is his left chest drainage tube... that little black dot in his belly is the stitch where they stitched up the spot where the central chest tube used to be. It's been out about a week now. The blue thingy on his shoulder is his central (PICC) line into the artery there, and of course, the IV in his hand, to which they've added a board. Basically, that serves as a weapon with which to bean himself in the head when no one is looking. Luckily, it's soft. Of course there's the vent taped to his face and propped on the white pad in from of his face.

He's eating again via the NG Tube (the yellow tube in his nose) at an excrutiatingly slow rate: just 2 ccs an hour, but they'll start to increase the rate as long as he does well with it.

The doctors and nurses have been all over him all day. They say he's doing "so much better today that Dr. Stern has decided not to do the catheter tomorrow, but to give him a couple more days to recuperate. If he needs to do it at all, it will be Thursday." I figure they'll still do it, they just had a scheduling problem and didn't want to tell me that someone else was more important than Nova. Whatever - I'm just tired of things changing so often and so quickly. I know that it's just part of the deal, but I'm tired. No one has said so, but I'm assuming that either tomorrow or Tuesday they'll try again to extubate and see how he does and decide whether he needs the cath on Thursday. I wish they'd just make a decision and stick with it. I'd prefer he didn't need the cath of course, but I can't take this on-again off-again thing.

And for the last 2 days, Nova is the only baby in the CVRU, which means he gets everyone's free time. I hear all the time how fat and cute he is, and how they all can't wait to hold him. They better! Me first!!!!