05/01/10 Recovery Continues

This morning Patricia went down to the hospital early to spend time with Eli while I watch the boys. When she gets there Eli is still intubated and he is still on the ventilator. They are planning to extubate him around 9:00am but they want to get a blood gas first to see how his CO2 levels are on the ventilator.

By 9:00am they have the blood gas in hand and Eli's CO2 level is sitting at 41. Being on the ventilator over night has definitely helped to blow off some CO2 and gives us some good information for long term support. If we need to go down the route of getting the tracheostomy at some point we now know we can support Eli and keep his CO2 level in the "normal" range on a ventilator. Previously we had assumed this would be the case but now we have factual information that proves it.

Shortly after the blood gas is done they extubate Eli. He is still desaturating and adjusting to breathing on his own again so they put him on the BiPAP for the rest of the day. He'll need to be on the BiPAP all day and all night. Fortunately he is still recovering from the surgery and he is sleeping a lot but at least he is starting to breathe on his own.

One of the little zingers with this particular surgery has to do with not being able to feed Eli for 24 hours. In fact, they had to hold his feedings for a minimum of 6 hours prior to the surgery so I think he missed 3 feeds before he went into surgery yesterday. The surgery was completed around 2:30pm yesterday so Eli won't be able to eat anything until 2:30pm today. They are giving him fluids through an IV right now but he has been very unhappy with us for cutting off his food supply.

By 2:30pm he is definitely ready for some food. They give him a little Pedialyte to get things started and then they resume his regular feeds every 3 hours.

The rest of the day and evening go pretty well but he hasn't really had any good awake time yet. He'll be on the mask hooked to the BiPAP all day and night to make sure we can support his breathing. Hopefully tomorrow will bring a return to normalcy.