Whenever you are in a hospital, the night shift is the worst. We had an amazing nurse named Rico. He was a Godsend. He was so gentle with Ryan and was so quiet and respectful when he entered the room. He knew right away that Ryan needed fluid and he made sure he received it ASAP. The only problem with Rico was that he couldn't hear me unless he was looking straight at me. So, we spent the night asking and answering each other questions - none of which were answered the way I had asked, or how he had because -- he couldn't hear me. That's ok. He took great care of my boy.
By 4:30 am I had finally slipped in to a deep sleep. The couch/bed here is not terrible and when I could fall asleep I did sleep quite well. At 5:45am I got a terrible wake up call. I didn't hear the door open, but I heard a very.loud GOOD MORNING! It startled me and I was ready to jump off the couch and push whoever it was out of the room. I turned over and tried to decipher who it was. She was young and was crouched on the ground looking at the drainage from Ryan's chest tube. I'm sure I sounded amazing when I asked if she was a doctor. She cheerfully told me that she was one of the residents. Ah - of course. She hadn't yet learned the proper etiquette of entering a room at 5:45AM! She wanted to listen to Ryan and then she wanted to roll him over so she could listen to his back. UH - NO! Sorry. Not sure who you are. Don't really care. And you are NOT touching him. If the doctors who come in say he can lay there because of pain, you are not moving him. So, in my not so nice/nice voice I told her that she may not touch him. Nobody had tried turning him. Nobody cared that he hadn't moved, and nobody had cared to listen to his back. She left the room and told me that she would return later with the rest of the General surgery team.
We met several doctors throughout the day. We were told that today would be the worst as far as pain went. It was hard to imagine that the pain would be harder than what he had experienced the day before. It wasn't long before I didn't have to imagine it. The decision was made to space Ryan's meds out. I don't know who had made that decision. The only group who had been to see us at that point was the General surgery team. I wrote the following update for our family and friends.
Update Day 2 - Today was a rough day for most of the day. Pain management kind of went down the tube. There was a disconnect somewhere and the orders went from allowing the big guns every three hours to every 6 hours. They tried transitioning to oral meds and he wasn't ready for that either. At some point today he couldn't receive anything to offset the pain because A - the orders had changed and B - the med he could receive contained the same ingredients as the oral meds so we were deadlocked. No Bueno. When he is in the most pain his respiratory stats go up significantly. When he is relaxed and not in pain the number hangs out around 15-18. During his highest pain today his respiratory numbers were in the 40s. He cried out at one point and exclaimed "by the time they get here with this damn medication my heavy duty meds will be here" His pain had hit a new threshold and it seemed there was no end in sight. Poor guy. He was right. It would be another hour and a half before the meds arrived.
By 2pm he was resting soundly. He is still on supplemental oxygen and will continue to be until he can take deeper breaths. Those deep breaths will come when his pain is under control. I left the hospital for a bit and when I returned around 3:45 his eyes were open and he was actually talking to people. That was the first I had seen of his eyes since before surgery.
Tonight he was able to tolerate jello and vanilla ice cream. He still doesn't move much, but we are seeing progress.
I've decided I need to write a medical public service announcement book. My first item of business and rule number one would be this - DO NOT march in to a room at 5:45 in the morning and yell good morning to patients and their parents. It's not good practice. I promise.
We experienced two tangible miracles today. 1 - They found a cocktail of Medicine that seems to be keeping the pain at bay. And 2 - The Ronald McDonald house!! Thank you again for your prayers. How can I ever repay you? Our Heavenly Father heard our prayers.
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