Day Thirteen Post Glenn - Monday, May 25, 2009

"As for God, His way is perfect;

the word of the LORD is flawless.

He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
For who is God besides the LORD ?

And who is the Rock except our God?
It is God who arms me with strength

and makes my way perfect."

2 Samuel 22: 31-33

TYSON IS IN STEP-DOWN!

Things have really started to pick up for Tyson in the past two days. As you can see from last night's blog update, he was extubated last night at about 6:30 pm. They had him in the head box for a while afterwards to give him a bit of extra help. He is doing very well and the chest x-ray this morning showed that the right lung collapse is healed! Sometimes all they need is to be breathing and coughing on their own in order to re-inflate the lung themselves.

He is now in a Step-Down room on the fourth floor! He is still on a bit of oxygen to help him out a bit and his sats are in the high 70's, low 80's.

As far as medications go, he is off the morphine infusion but will still be getting Tylenol when needed. He is still on Lasix to help him flush out fluids. But he hasn't been on Milrinone (the IV version of Captopril) for about a week now. I asked the cardiologist if this means that he will no longer need Captopril at home and he thinks it is unlikely that he will need it! So no more Enox injections and no more Captopril either! He will probably still be on Lasix for a few days after we go home but that is no big deal. It looks as if he will not be on ANY medications anymore after that!

Today his arterial line was taken out and the stitches from his chest tubes were taken out. He is still on the sats monitors obviously, and his PIV line is still in his hand, just in case he needs some meds through IV.

He drank three bottles today and I will most likely get to begin nursing him again tomorrow. As long as he drinks enough each time and he gains well, they will pull the Ng in time too.

Last night Brian and I were playing with Tyson and making faces at him and he actually laughed at us! It wasn't a very loud laugh because his throat still hurts from being intubated so long, but he was definitely laughing! Brian and I were laughing and crying at the same time when we heard this lovely sound coming from our son's mouth! It is so good to have Tyson starting to get back to normal again! (And we heard the nurses arguing over who gets to take care of Tyson last night! Either that or they were fighting over Brian, not quite sure which!)

Mel:)