Post G-Tube Surgery

Caden is still stable, however, he is having a harder time recovering from surgery than we would have liked. It's not terribly surprising though, considering his history. He is still on the ventilator. Apparently during the night on Thursday night, his oxygen saturation dropped really low at one point so they decided they didn't want to rush to extubate him. As much as I want him off the ventilator so we can get home, I am glad they didn't try to extubate him when he clearly wasn't ready. They also put him back on the nitric oxide because they want to prevent any kind of pulmonary hypertensive crisis and cardiac arrest like he experienced four days after his first surgery.

During the day on Friday, he was asleep most of the time. But he would get kind of agitated and wiggle his arms and legs around. It seemed like he was in pain so they were giving him morphine periodically. However, that didn't seem to be cutting it, so Amy, his primary nurse, got one of the doctors to write an order for an IV drip pain medication. It sounded like one of the doctors didn't really want to do this but would rather just give him a paralytic. I am glad that Amy was advocating for him because I would rather they manage his pain instead of just paralyzing him and masking it.

Last night when I was at the hospital after shift change, Caden was wide awake and looking around. I sat with him awhile and he started to get pretty agitated. When I looked at the monitor, it showed his blood pressure was pretty high. So I told the nurse and he gave him some medication to bring it down. Then when the doctor came around, the nurse told her about it and asked if he could increase the pain medication. The doctor authorized it so they went up on the meds so he would be more comfortable.

I am glad Caden got the g-tube and nissen because I think it will help us get home and will allow us to feed him without the worry of him aspirating. However, it is hard to see him now because he is extremely swollen from surgery and it just feels like we've taken a huge step back. I just have to remember that he had another major surgery and he has to recover from it. That is going to take some time, and with Caden, he has his own timetable with everything.

The doctors also decided to move Caden yet again. He is back in a room he was in previously just in a different spot. This is the fifth place he's been in the CVICU alone! We're not entirely sure why they moved him this time. His old spot is still empty. But there is one baby in the room he was in who is very sick and we think maybe they wanted to move Caden to another room in order to separate them. Since Caden is post-op he would be more susceptible to any germs or infection. We don't know this for sure, but we're just guessing.

Anyway, we appreciate your prayers and ask you to continue praying for Caden's recovery from this most recent surgery. Once he is off the ventilator, the doctors will need to work to get him balanced on all his medications that he will be on when we go home. Once he has been steady on those for a few days, they will move us to anther unit and we will learn how to administer his meds as well as how to feed him through the g-tube. And then we'll be able to go home! It seems like such a short time period, but in reality it could take awhile. Thank you for your prayers during this last leg of our journey to get home.