Time for an update

I apologize for not being too great on keeping up communications while Caelan's in the hospital but it's hard to find the time, and quite honestly when you do get time you choose to sleep!

Unfortunately Caelan wasn't quite on board the "boring" plan of just sleeping, resting and staying calm.  No sooner had I entered that last post that Mr. C started being a real turkey.

There's this thing in the hospital called 'the bowel movement protocol'.  On Sunday, Caelan was three days post op without having pooped despite the numerous medications that they give to help this along.  This meant that he got this little extra something-something to get things moving and without going into too much detail, it worked.  However in working it also broke Caelan's calm, restful state.  Caelan's heart rate started to climb steadily and his oxygen saturations were dipping lower and lower.  He'd received all the meds available to him and nothing seemed to calm him back down.  Took all afternoon and some of the evening before things started getting back to normal.  Eventually, he settled but it took a long time and quite honestly it had Momma pretty nervous.  He's no longer only getting 25% oxygen, it's now more like 45% but at least he's saturating more mid-high 90s and his heart rate is beautiful!!

Yesterday he did pretty well following the boring plan until shortly after shift change when he blew his IV.  As frustrating as it is, he did much better on this count than Damian and I had thought since this was still his surgery IV, so a full four days.  It took two nurses and four attempts but they managed to get a new IV without Caelan getting upset about it all.  I was impressed because no IV means no steady infusion of morphine or midazolam and yet Caelan remained completely calm the entire time.  So proud of him, he's really embracing his chloral hydrate and sleeping his week away.

They've introduced clonidine, which is is a pain reliever but not a narcotic so it helps with the withdrawal. Caelan had this in the NICU too so we're familiar with it.  For the last two days he hasn't needed any extra boosts of morphine or midazolam, just the infusion, the chloral hydrate and the clonidine. He's finished his antibiotic, and although he's still low grade fever his white blood cell count is still not elevated.  Phew!

In fact, we got news today that tomorrow is the BIG day.  Caelan will be heading back into the operating room for another bronchoscopy and potential extubation.... SO EXCITING!!

Then we're on to the wild and crazy times... withdrawal. 
I would be so happy to be wrong about this next step...