he's stable

I feel like that should read "stable-ish"...

This isn't going to be easy to type and probably not much easier to read...

Yesterday didn't get better before it got much, much worse.  Caelan left for the OR to be intubated.  He was nicely sedated and we weren't expecting him to be gone too long.  We left for the café to grab a quick drink.
 
Imagine, it's a Sunday and the hospital is very quiet.  Every parent's worst nightmare would be to hear a Code Blue call to the OR.  That's what happened.  We were both in shock and I think wanted desperately to believe that there must be someone else in for an emergency surgery on a Sunday afternoon.  How awful is that?  Then one of the PICU nurses is there beside us.  I don't want to hear what she has to say and I don't want to go with her, but I do.  We rush up to the operating room.  We aren't allowed to see him yet.  We must wait. We discover that chest compressions had to be done for about five minutes, but they've stopped... Then we're told he's stable.  We can continue to wait there in the hall or go back and wait in the ICU.  We choose to return to his ICU room.  A resident comes to let us know that the chest compressions were started right away so they're expecting a good outcome. His heart stopped.  He had no pulse.  But they got him back.  He's stable.

Finally he comes back to the ICU.  We're able to give him a quick kiss before being ushered away.  They were unable to get a central line in the OR and really need one.  His blood pressure has been low and needs monitoring.  They'll continue to work on the central lines in the ICU.

There's a second cardiac arrest.  Chest compressions again.

We need those central lines.  The ICU staff try and anasthesiology try without success.  Eventually, our beloved Dr. M., the cardiac surgeon who repaired Caelan's vascular ring at three days old is called in.  He works for two hours to get both an arterial line and a venus line by cut down.  In between, Urology was called in to put in Caelan's foley catheter.

It was a very long day... and it's only three o'clock in the afternoon.

In the end Caelan had three IV's (one in his belly and each wrist) and three central lines (one in his left leg that has since been taken out and the two from cut down in his right).  He'd received a blood transfusion and has been intubated.  He's back on all those narcotics that we've worked so hard on weaning him from over the past two months - today would have been his last dose!