Day Two Post-Glenn - Thursday, May 14, 2009

"Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him." Psalm 37:7

Today was a pretty uneventful day in Tyson's recovery process. He has not moved too far forward today at all. Because he had such a terrible day yesterday, he is pretty much exhausted and he spent most of his day sleeping.

Although they have turned down the settings on the ventilator, he is still fairly reliant on it and his oxygen saturations are not very good at all. He has stayed in the low 60's all day. The only time I saw him go to the 70's was immediately after physio therapy on his lungs, which happens three times a day right now. (It involves some percussion exercisers on his chest and some deep suctioning with a vacuum-like tube to remove secretions.) The doctors are pretty baffled and have tried experimenting with the settings on the ventilator. They have turned the oxygen concentration levels up and down, experimented with the PEEP settings (pressures), the SiMH rate (resp rates) and nothing has worked to improve his sats. Sometimes it takes a few days for the body to get used to the new pulmonary blood flow as it changes the whole way the blood circulates. We just have to wait it out and if it doesn't improve in the next few days, Tyson will go for another heart catheterization. He had a heart cath done in March in preparation for this surgery. It is done in the CDIU (Cardiac Diagnostic Interventional Unit - or "cath lab") here at Sick Kids and it involves sending a catheter through his groin into the heart to measure blood flow and pressures, etc. This may tell the doctors more about why his sats are not improving.

I am feeling a little scared about this because the last time Tyson was in the hospital with pneumonia, I met a woman whose son was in the hospital for over 3 weeks because his sats were not improving and no one could figure out why. Other than that, he was healthy and eating well but he just couldn't bring his sats up so they were applying for home O2. I am really hoping that something can be done about Tyson's low sats and we won't have to resort to going home with him on oxygen.

Tyson has had a few chest x-rays today to see if maybe extra secretions are causing the low sats. The right lung collapse is almost totally re-inflated. The re-intubation helped with that, so that is one good thing about the ventilator. However, his lungs are still very wet looking and they have increased his dose of Lasix (or Furosemide, a diuretic to make him pee) they are also going to try putting him on an additional diuretic to try to get rid of some of the extra fluids. He gets 3 oz of breast milk every three hours round the clock, through the Ng tube.

So....here I sit.....waiting for a change in his condition. It sure takes an extra measure of patience since this whole time we thought Tyson was such a fighter. I'm sure he won't be intubated for the rest of his life but his recovery time may take longer than we anticipated. They won't be extubating him anytime today anymore but they will continue to turn down the settings on the ventilator overnight. If his sats are going to stay low with or without the ventilator, they might as well extubate and then figure out the problem with low sats later. I'm not 100% sure what the plan is as far as extubation, but I do know it won't be today or tonight.

Please keep praying guys. It means so much to us to have the communion of saints experiencing this with us. We could not get through this difficult time without the prayers of the people and the help of our Heavenly Father, who knows our every need even before we ask!

Take care, (and Brian: I LOVE YOU!)

Mel:)