Jul 19, 2007

Morning Update

Shortly after we left the hospital yesterday, as the nurse's shift change was going on, Andrew apparently had another "incident" that was worse than most of his recent tantrums. He was doing his normal thing, screaming without sound and flailing his limbs, when they decided to change his position just a bit to see if he would improve. That really freaked him out, and he decided to desaturate and drop his pulse below 100. Luckily the doctor and nurses were already there, moving him, so he was like that for only a very short period, while they took him off the vent and "bagged him" to have better control over his breathing. Both his pulse and his oxygen saturation recovered quickly after that (within a minute) and he was okay. With that short of a problem, there's no permanent damage done, but they definitely want to keep an eye on him. The surgeon came back to check on him, the doctor is spending a little more time with him, and he seems to be fine since then. He got a little fussy just before I called at 2am last night, but his nurse this morning says he has been quiet ever since.

There's no change in the schedule for surgery...unless they suspect something that needs immediate attention, it'll still be tomorrow morning. The nurses have free rein to keep him comfortable (his morphine schedule has been increased), and we don't expect any pain he's having to continue past the surgery. He's not actually getting less healthy or more upset in general, he just happened to have a bad night. We still believe that the surgery isn't required right now, but we are definitely looking forward to next week, after he has a couple of days to recover post-operatively.

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