Monday~Monday

Well~ I am really feeling the Monday blah's!
Sorry the lack of updates the last few days. Saturday, Tammy and Glenny came up to see me. They took me to dinner and we browsed around at a couple stores. It was nice to get out of the hospital for a bit. I have not left in 1 week except for to go shower. It was a nice break and probably needed. That morning Dr Law told me I should go back to bed and sleep then go get some sunshine and come back and sleep some more! I am figuring I must have looked pretty rough! Yesterday, I slept in and got some much needed rest. Dr Baden was razzing me this morning about sleeping 'through his shift' (which was until about noon...) but I just replied it was on 'Dr's orders'! :) He said he couldn't agree more, "The best and most expensive babysitter you will ever have...take advantage if it!" Boy is that an understatement.
So a summary of the last couple days....
He was put on the oscillator ventilator Saturday. He was at the highest settings on the regular ventilator that they felt were safe for him. He is heavily sedated and now on a Vec (paralytic) drip. The oscillator ventilator doesn't allow for good suctioing. They had tried a couple times over the weekend and he decompinsated quickly. They decided that was not a risk they wanted to take and quit suctioning him. Today his sats fell pretty quickly and they felt the need to have an emergency back up plan in place in case he decompensated again. The back up plan is VV ECMO. VV ECMO is lung support while VA ECMO is lung and heart. They felt that they needed to bag suction him but incase it went bad they had the surgeons cleared and ready to intervene. I am VERY glad to say that Joshua handled it really well and remain on the oscillator ventilator for now. It was quite a sight to see 5 docs, the nurse and 2 RT's in here for a bag suction! Dr Baden was 'running' the bag and the RT was able to get some of the junk out. There was a light heartedness in the room that was much needed and made me feel at ease. :)
Joshua's gas was a little better and they took another xray. The nurse and I are calling a do-over on the xray because it looked much better on the machine than it did on the computer. We are still waiting for the report. They also just did an ultrasound to see if some of the white on the xray is due to pleural effusion. I will let you know what I find out later.
Tammy is his nurse today and took the liberty of totalling his fluid balance (and I use the term balance lightly)...he is 3 liters positive since he came off ECMO. He is SO SWOLLEN. I will take a picture and post later tonight so you can see what I am talking about.
The plan....as of right NOW...is to hold steady. They will bag suction him again when the surgeons are available and we will look at him again then and see if we can come up with a plan (another term I use very loosely)!
Please pray that we can figure out how to make him better without the use of ECMO again, but that if we do need to resort to ECMO, that he does as well as he did last time.
His heart seems to be doing just fine still.

Notes for mom:
Dopamine up, Milrinone down, No temp for several days (36.2) Toe temp about 34. Lactate down to 1.9.