Another good night...

Charlie and I had another good night last night. (Probably helped in
part by the fact that there was a slight oversight with regard to his
morphine dosage, so he'd been left on his immediately post-op dosage -
enough to zonk a small elephant!)
So consequently, he slept well throughout the night (I thought he
seemed a bit sleepy and spacey yesterday!) He settled for the night at
about 9pm, and woke maybe five times, either for a drink, to throw up
some of the water he'd already drunk, or to have a good cough.
And then he went straight back to sleep. Which suited me, to be
honest, because Pete and I spent all of last night on ICU, so there
wasn't much sleeping going on.
anyway, they've been weaning his morphine down overnight and he's
almost at the right dose now.
He's still on a bit of milrinone, but rumour has it that they'll be
stopping that fairly soon and putting him back onto his normal
enalapril. He's also on a heparin infusion to thin his blood, so it
doesn't clot in the new conduit that was put in during surgery. He'll
stay on that for a few days before they switch him over to warfarin.
His Fontan is fenestrated, which means there's a hole been punched
between the conduit and his heart, which acts as an escape valve while
his pressures are sorting themselves out. This causes the sats to be
lower initially than they would otherwise be, but lessens other
complications. Charlie is off oxygen altogether now and is satting at
high 80s/low 90s. This should continue to get higher and higher as the
days go by.
He is still being paced by the external pacemaker, but all being well,
the pacemaker team should be down with their computer later today to
tweak his new internal pacemaker, after which they will hopefully
remove his external wires.
The drainage from his chest tubes is pretty good so far - it's getting
clearer and there's not too much so far. However, once he starts
eating properly and moving around, we expect the rate to increase -
then we just have to hope that the rate tails off quickly and doesn't
keep us in hospital for weeks and weeks (...and weeks, and weeks...!)
We're playing the 'let's see what wires and tubes can come out now'
game again - each one coming out feels like a step closer to home.
So far, Charlie's lost his ventilator, his atrial pressure line, his
arterial line, his catheter and his ng tube.
Still remaining are his central line (in his neck), three chest
drains, external pacing wires, a cannula in his left hand and a
cannula in his right foot.
Let's hope we can keep ticking them off.
PS Someone asked in the comments if the red mark on Charlie's neck had been left by the IVs - no, it's the antibacterial stuff they slathered all over him while he was in theatre. He is bright pink from his neck to his knees! I have a feeling he'll be a bit peeved about this when he's a bit livelier because pink is for girls! (Except when it applies to lips, fingernails and toenails - in which case he'll put up with it!)
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