Secretions

What's been going on you ask? Volcanic ash, a Maximum Security Prison incident, dodgy Rugby League team found out and Ethy Boy battling Cardiac Disease.

Mainly, it has been lots of sleep. Ethan has been clocking around 19 hours a day of sleep. The fever has come back somewhat and his chest is still full of secretions. As Ethan is sleeping in our room, it can be quite disconcerting to hear him breathing in the morning with a gurgling noise coming from his chest. We must put that concerned feeling aside and remember that he is actually comfortable and he is breathing steadily, it's just the 'noise' he is making that is making us uncomfortable.

With the lower half of his chest clogged with secretions, coughing is very important, but Ethan can't really cough like he used to. They are half coughs, that clear a bit of the gunk, but not enough. This will further compromise his oxygen deficiency. As a result of this congestion, the Dr has prescribed a new drug to add to his pump cocktail tomorrow, to help dry out the secretions.

We have had a couple of incidents where the pump was found to be not working. Ethan usually notifies us of severe leg pain when this happens, and we have to give him a break through to get on top of it quickly, or hit the button on the pump a few times to bolus some through. The worst incident was discovering at 11pm the pump hadn't been working for around 11 hours.

Apart from that, we are plugging along each day. We are eating food that has been generously cooked by friends/relatives, and like Ethan, have been stacking on the pounds :) I now only have about 12 square meters of lawn to mow thanks to the rest of it being poisoned. This has cut my lawn mowing time down from around 30mins to 40 secs. Excellent!