Saturday, September 11, 2010

Saturday, September 11, 2010





Ella, Sam and Maeve got to hold Caleb for the first time today. There is a wonderful family program at U of M to support not only patients, but siblings and parents. Each of the kids got to make a picture button of Caleb to show off their baby brother.

Today was a "step back" day. When we got to the hospital this morning, we found out that they had to put Caleb back on high flow oxygen. His left lung was "hazy" looking and had some collapse. He doesn't need a high oxygen concentration, but the higher volume helps to keep his lung inflated. The thinking is that as he gets stronger, he can take deeper and stronger breaths to keep the lung inflated.

Caleb threw up a few times, but nothing terrible. Maeve disagrees as she is officially the first family member he threw up on. I assured her that she won't be the last.

I brought the kids home tonight. When given the chance to stay in Ann Arbor or come home and have a normal Sunday (Church, lunch at Dougherty's, supper at Wieland's), they chose normal. The worst part was that they assumed Dad would be here too and were very disappointed when they found out he was staying with Caleb. This has been hard on them, but they are being very strong.

When Phil got back to the hospital, Caleb had slipped further. They had to increase his oxygen to keep him at acceptable levels. Phil noticed that Caleb looked like he was in pain, so he asked the nurse about his medication. Caleb had not had pain medication in 17 hours. He is not on a schedule, he is given medicine when pain is noticed. We had left the hospital this afternoon to hang out with the kids and the nurse had not noticed his pain. Phil talked to the nurse and the nurse practioner. If he was in alot of pain from his surgery last Friday (something everyone thinks is very likely), it would be hard to take deep breaths. After his medication, his blood pressure, heart rate and breathing rate decreased. With this, his oxygen levels increased some. We don't know for sure if it was pain that caused the evening backslide, but it makes sense. Now that we know what to look for and have talked to the nurse and nurse practioner, hopefully, we can better control his pain and do what we can to keep him moving forward.

Although today we had a couple of steps back, Caleb is still moving forward overall. He is definitely getting stronger each day!

1 comment:

  1. How wonderful to see each of the children getting to hold their new baby brother! That is SO awesome! Hope you & the children have a wonderful "normal" Sunday together, & that Phil doesn't get thrown-up on very much ;o) Praise the Lord Philip noticed Caleb's pain so he could get relief! Hugs to you all! God Bless!

    ReplyDelete