PICU - January 7-8, 2013

Well true to form, Ian decided not to behave for me last night...his morning (7th) started off well....as the afternoon went on he needed more and more cough assist and suctioning; again it was lots of thick gunk coming out. Brian left for the night and told Ian to behave for Mommy....why should Ian listen to Daddy?

Around 8:00pm, Ian said he was not feeling well and wanted/needed his cough assist. I started it and he kept shaking his head saying that it was not right...I played with the settings, they were the same as what we use at home. So I tried again and again, Ian continued to say that it was not right. We called in the respiratory therapists (RT), she tried it once, same thing, Ian said it was not right. So the RT, Ian and I decided suctioning was needed. Not sure why but I called in Ian's nurse....I needed her in there with me when suctioning was happening....I needed the extra support. So they started suctioning again, and with that Ian decided to really misbehave, he sats went down to the 70's....it went from being just the 3 of us in the room to another 3-4 RN's coming to join us. Then came the doctors....they were working on stabilizing him, getting his levels back up; did some more suctioning, etc. Decided Ian needed to have another chest x-ray done to compare it to the one from Saturday night in the ER, some more blood work done to see what was going on....in addition to all of this, they decided to transfer him from the pediatric floor to the PICU, he could get more of the individualized care he was going to need...the whole team was wonderful at this point. Oh I also forgot to mention that Ian was asking for Brian...so I also started working on how to pull off getting Brian back down to Hopkins with Becca at home sleeping. So phone calls were made...thank you Freda-Dale and Mekenzie....thank you Mom and Dad....so down came Brian, Nana and Pop. As the 3 of them were coming onto the floor there must have been 20 people around Ian's bed and room....and PICU we are back...

So the transfer went well...x-rays taken, blood drawn (a few different times), bi-pap settings increased, cough assist done, more suctioning....I have not idea what time it was at this point. The chest x-ray came back, Ian's left lung had collapsed, it was thought he had an infection (not sure if it was pneumonia or blood infection). My parents left around 2:00am to go home as Ian was stable...around 3:00am Ian decided it was time for me to go home and for Brian to stay. So letting him lead the way, I went home...got about 3 hours of sleep but that is more then Brian and Ian got....after I left, some of Ian's tests came back....his white blood count went from 7,000 to 18,000...an infection was there....antibiotics come take it away. In order for the antibiotics to be started, it was time for the nurses to come in and work on getting IV's into Ian....that is not an easy task...his veins stink...I am not sure how many times they needed to stick him...he now has 2 IV's in his left arm....

Another chest x-ray was taken this morning....it is night and day from the one done last night....with all of the chest therapies he is getting, something every 2 hours, the increase in the bi-pap settings and the full face mask instead of just the nasal mask...the left lung has started to re-inflate. The virus swab they re-took last night came back negative for RSV...we still have to wait for the final to come back.

Currently, he is still stable, they have decreased some of his bi-pap settings, another chest x-ray will be taken at 6:00 tonight, blood will be re-taken sometime tonight...and we will see where we go from here....

Thank you to everyone who has checked in, emails, texts, phone calls....please know we are doing our best to get back in touch with everyone but it is just not possible...we will continue to work on updating the blog daily....