Today was a really hard day. We took one step forward and two steps back... He was doing great all morning and they decided to extubate him. We were all excited, Chris and I, the doctors, the nurses, the respiratory therapists... Everybody thought he was doing great and we were all excited to get that tube out!
So sometime in the afternoon they went ahead and did the extubation. The tube came out quick and Elijah coughed a little, but he couldn't really cry, he just made a squeaky noise. They put a nasal cannula in to give him extra oxygen and let him try to breathe on his own. He was working really hard at it, breathing in, but having a really hard time exhaling. He was still pretty worked up from everything, so the doctor said to let him calm down and rest a little and see if his breathing got better. So they let him sit for a while and he was continuing to struggle. Then his oxygen stats started to go down and the nurse went to get the doctor who came back in and held a breathing mask over his mouth and nose. Then they were commenting on how hard his chest was retracting and everything started getting crazy after that.
They called in a ton of people, there were probably 15-20 doctors and nurses in here and everyone was surrounding him. They knew they had to reintubate him because he wasn't getting enough oxygen and so they were trying to look down his throat, but they couldn't see through because it was swollen shut. They had the ENT (ear, nose, and throat) people come up so they could see him, but they didn't get much of a chance to see what was going on down there because his heart rate and oxygen started dropping severely. Then they started giving him CPR and at that point I had to look away. The worst thing I have ever seen and can ever imagine seeing is my son lying motionless on a hospital bed with 15 doctors surrounding him and getting his chest pounded on while people yelled out his stats.
I completely broke down at that point, my head was in Chris' chest and I was crying and calling out to Jesus to please save my son over and over. Then Chris started telling me that his stats were coming back up, he was gonna be ok...
The doctors managed to get him reintubated and stabilized and the catastrophe passed. They did an x-ray right away to see how his lungs held up during the whole ordeal, and they looked ok. About the same as they did before I think, not too much worse. I was afraid they may have collapsed again with all the trauma, but thankfully they were still doing ok. So now the big problem is not with his lungs, but with his throat and vocal chords. Apparently his throat is almost completely swollen shut, this could be for a number of reasons. Also, his vocal chords are stretched as tight as they go and they're not sure how much damage there is. So he does have to be intubated for a little while longer. They are putting him on steroids now to reduce the swelling and hope to be able to extubate him again in a few days. This time when they extubate, the ENT people will do it. They came to talk to us and said they may even take him down to the OR (operating room) so they can really look in there and see what's going on. So this time we really have the specialists working on it.
Also, our doctor stopped back in a little while ago to listen to his chest and said that he is wheezing quite a bit. I asked her what that tells her and she said it means there is probably airway obstruction in the lower airways and not just the throat. Then she said that she is pretty sure that there is something going on in there that they just don't understand. So we are still sitting in a place with no answers. They don't know why his lungs failed, they don't know why his throat swelled shut, they don't know why there is restriction in his lower airways.
He is doing ok now, breathing with the ventilator and keeping his stats up. He's totally out right now, they had to give him sedation and a paralytic when they reintubated him. The paralytic's worn off already, but he is still pretty conked out. He is moving a little and opening his eyes every now and then, but he is just exhausted from the whole ordeal. He should be able to be awake and moving like he was before all this, just mildly sedated. So we are sort of back to where we were yesterday, except we are furthur away from recovery now.
We need your prayers more than ever. This whole process has been extremely difficult and stressful. We just want to know what is happening to our little boy. We obviously want him to fully recover, but we don't want to leave the hospital without knowing what is going on! Please, please, please pray that the doctors will find answers to everything that is going on. And please pray that God will heal our baby totally and completely.
Praying!
ReplyDeleteKatie