3/30/06

Little man is looking good - he's been taken off the antibiotics, and he's now on AmBisone and Diflucan to fight the yeast. He had a fever earlier, which they treated with Tylenol, and it didn't return after that, however, but they ran cultures on everything to check for infection. Obviously, since they're taking him off so many of the antibiotics, they don't feel that there's one to worry about, and fever is a side effect of the AmBisone.

His profusion and color still look great, O2 levels have been great, except for one episode earlier this morning, which was settled by some chest PTs and suctioning of the vent tube.

The incision in his belly looks good - a nice healthy pink with no apparent infection. The colostomy site looks healthy. The chest tubes are still draining quite a bit, but better out than in. There doesn't seem to be any residual bleeding from the perforated lung. He was "dry" and wasn't having much urine output, so they are giving him 25% albumen. That seems to be working well. They're watching his urine output... Well, they always have been, urine output seems to be an indicator for many different problems - we tease that CVRU runs on pee - but right now, being on IV AmBisone poses the risk of renal problems, so they're keeping up with it for that right now. So long as the albumen causes higher urinary output, there's no reason to suspect kidney damage.

He's still pretty zooted, but he's comfortable and doing really well, and does wake up and look around a little - as much as one can when they're stoned on Morphine and Versed, lol. There hasn't been any mention of extubation yet, but I'm sure that will be a few more days because of the punctured lung.

Shanda has him again tonight - but then she's off for SIX days! Hopefully this weekend Sharron will be on and get him, she hasn't had him in like 3 weeks. Anyway, last night while Shanda was on, she took his cath lab bear (kids get a tedy bear every time they have a heart cath - he has 3 so far) and she took his ribbon off and turned it into a headband, rolled up the sleeves on his little t-shirt, made him a pack of marlboros and folded them into his sleeve, put those 1980s holes in his shirt and gave him a tattoo - and says it's his "tough" bear. Perfect for my tough little guy. Unfortunately, he looks more like a Flash Dance bear lol! We thought maybe it was the headband, so we took it off and then he looked like a homeless bear, lmao... too funny. She said one of the nurses told her not to do the holes in his shirt 'cuz we might get mad. HA! Whatever nurse said that obviously never took care of Nova! We love it! It's right along the lines of the Easy Button.

So, he had a good day, that's 2 in a row! Unfortunately, I forgot the camera today :|