Thursday, April 01, 2010

Feeling miserable

Charlie is not a happy boy today. He is tired and very sore.
His drains are pulling and I think he is reaching the end of his tether.
Today he is having his central line and two drains removed (the doctor
is not happy to take out the third until he's had another day or so of
no drainage.)
The external pacing wires are being left in situ until the doctors are
sure what's going on with his pacemaker.
There was something of a panic this morning when today's nurse misread
last night's nurse's writing and thought a '76' was a '46', which
would have meant that Charlie was overriding his pacemaker again. Last
night's nurse had told us that Charlie hadn't been bradycardic all
night, so we were a little confused. The doctors were notified, but
fortunately, before there were any major interventions, Pete spotted
the mistake on Charlie's notes (old eagle eyes!) and the crisis was
averted.
It seems that in fact the pacemaker worked as it should do all last
night, but we still don't know if he will need to go back to theatre.
One positive thing is that if he does need to have the wire fixed,
there is a good chance it can be done via cardiac catheter, rather
than by reopening his sternotomy.
Today, we are all feeling tired and fed up. There is so much
uncertainty, and as I've said before, I find the 'not knowing' the
hardest thing of all.
Charlie has just taken his midazolam - to make him feel woozy for his
drain removal, so we're watching to see if he starts seeming a bit
drunk. Hopefully he'll have a good sleep afterwards.
One of the little girls on the ward is two today, so there will be a
little party on the ward this afternoon. We hope Charlie will be awake
enough and feeling well enough to be able to go.

Sent from my iPhone

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