Cardiac Surgery Day 2

Ethan had a long night fighting the ventilator, literally trying to physically remove it. To combat this they used a stack of morphine, midazolam and arm splints. He also had more issues with his blood pressure, this time it had gone too high. They started more medication to lower it.

Finally at 6am they decided to remove the ventilator. Probably based on the fact that Ethan had already moved it. He was breathing on his own but requiring a lot of oxygen. After a long night he finally looked comfortable. The plan was to remove some more tubes, start physio and move up to the 7th floor.

Ethan had a couple of lines removed, one from his neck, and arm. They took a while to stop bleeding due to the blood thinning medication but they finally stopped. However half an hour later when Ethan had a cough, blood shot out of his neck nearly shooting the nurse in the eye. The nurse laughed, saying it was like a scene out of a Monty Python movie. The blood thinning medication was put on hold for a couple of hours. He needs to be on blood thinners to aid flow through the conduit but not so much he bleeds uncontrollably. He was able to down half an icy-pole before noon.

He went up to the Cardiac ward at 12:30pm, about 24 hours post surgery which was above expectations.

Ethan wasn't too compliant with physio, the high doses of morphine made it impossible for him to wake up to blow the bubbles. Physio is even more important to Ethan because of his lung disease, so chest percussions it was. It looked very painful and sounded worse but Ethan tolerated the pounding well.

His Oxygen wasn't put back on after physio as his sats were about 80%, and he stayed like this for the rest of the day and evening. He is now a good pink colour. This time was also spent sleeping. We woke him up at around 6pm and he ate another icy-pole. His ears perked up when he heard another kid playing his favourite Simpsons game. He was a bit happier, but soon went off to sleep again.

Earlier this morning, a couple of hours after the Ventilator was removed



The icy-pole was good medicine for his sore throat post extubation



Now up on the ward, sleeping off the morphine - 3 times the usual amount



This last one was at 6:30pm tonight, he was fairly relaxed, sussing things out. He had half an icy pole and a bit of jelly, then it was lights out again.