making progress

Sometimes the time goes so slowly in hospital and other times you can barely keep up. 

Those are our days at CHEO. 

Lately the days have been slow, and it's been a nice change of pace from last week. 

Caelan has been slowly waking up.  It's a very gradual process as there are still lots of drugs in his system.  We're working hard at keeping him from withdrawing but today he seems quite focused on the area above his bed... I'm wondering if there are some pink dancing elephants or singing Thomas trains up there.  We've been told that if Pain Services have the doses correct he shouldn't be hallucinating but you'll have a hard time convincing me of that today.  It's hard to watch your child suffer from withdrawal.  Caelan doesn't seem too bothered by the shakes, and actually they seem much better today.  I think it probably bothers Mommy more.

Yesterday was a pretty momentous day.  Taking some significant steps in the right direction. 

Caelan had his eyes open for a good chunk of the day.  I'd have a hard time saying he was alert but definitely aware and awake enough to give some people the stink eye when they entered his room! 

He managed to get rid of that foley catheter since he's been peeing like a racehorse.  Most of the puffiness is gone although his tummy is still quite distended. 

And hooray, hooray, the central line is out with no foreseeable requirement for regular blood work!!  That means we were also able to stop the heparin solution that was going in.  The clot he had was gone but there's such a higher risk for a clot to form with a central line they kept the heparin running at a much slower rate to prevent another clot from forming.

ENT came by and changed Caelan's trache ties.  They were pretty gross since they were the same ones from surgery day.  We're working on lowering Caelan's vent settings to hopefully have him completely off of it by tomorrow morning.  Also on the schedule for tomorrow morning is Caelan's first trache change post op.  It's a bit hard to believe that tomorrow will mark one week since Caelan got his tracheotomy back.

Today we finally touched base with Discharge Planning and they're hoping to have nursing all in place by the weekend. Sounds a bit like a dream to me...  I think I've mentioned before that because we're already familiar with all the tracheotomy care there shouldn't be much delay in getting discharged after that first trache change.  We're looking at a couple days of observation and some kind of weaning schedule for all those fancy drugs but then we're pretty much good to go!!

I'm trying not to get too excited about possibly being home by the weekend, but let's face it, who am I kidding??  I'm over the moon!!  That would make me so super duper happy!!