Ups and Downs

Today started off on a high when we went to say good morning to Noah and his eye lids started moving straight away like he could hear us and knew we were there.  The nurse said straight away his resp rate went up when he heard us and he started breathing over the vent for a few seconds which was so nice to hear.  

During the morning round the doctors said they were really pleased with the progress Noah has been making and that it looked like he may only be a couple of days away from getting off the vent. They continued to lower his sedation meds and blood pressure meds and they were happy as he needed less help from the vent and his settings were also lowered.   Dr Peter said that although things were looking up that it's going to take a long time for Noah to be back to his usual self after this.  In his words he said he's been 'knocked for six' (I'm not sure that my friends from overseas will understand that term?:)

We spent a couple of hours with him before going out do to some washing, have a break and a walk and get some lunch.  Aaron spends ages doing Soduku puzzles which I couldn't stand, but it keeps him busy :)

It's hard to sit around and not be able to do anything so I usually keep busy by massaging his hands and feet, and try to get some of the fluid moving.  I'm hardly sleeping at night and I don't think it's from worry but more because I'm so used to hearing Noah's noises in the night and not having in the room with me makes it hard to relax.  I would much prefer to be getting up in the night to suction and change his position because of his snoring, than to have a completely silent room.

His hands are are a lot less puffy, but his feet are really tight.  The doctor told me yesterday that it may be a result of lowering the blood pressure medication (I think - it's hard to remember everything they are telling us at the moment).

We decided to go down to the wharf for lunch and got some lovely fish and chips.  It was nice to sit out in the sun for a while and take a break.

Later in the afternoon Noah was turned over to another side so the physios could do some chest physio and his sats started dropping straight away.  They thought that he may have a mucous plug but had no luck getting anything up even after bagging him and doing lots of suctioning, so unfortunately they had to turn his vent settings up, and he has now gone back up to 50% oxygen instead of 30%.  They also had to put the peep settings back up (the amount of pressure).

The doctor said tonight that because there's been some ups and downs during the day it's not looking so good to get him off the vent by the end of the week and we will have to chat tomorrow about what's going to happen since the weekend is getting closer.  He didn't say, but it sounds like they don't want to attempt anything until early next week.  We will know more tomorrow but we were prepared for a long week or two and will have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.