Rough Night

Sam had another bad night. He had the headaches all day yesterday and then they continued into the night. He cried almost all day, and the Motrin/Tylenol with Codeine mix just wasn't even touching the pain. Then he kicked his IV out of his foot. The nurse called someone (dont know who) and they said they had to put the IV back in. SO they carted Sam off at 11pm to a 'procedure room' so that their 'expert nurse' could put in the IV. Long story short, Sam now has 3 extra holes in his body, one in his scalp, and NO IV...they couldn't get one to take. So they called that person again, and that person (still dont know who) said forget it, and they changed Sam's IV antibiotic to an oral....which is what they should have done ANYWAY...Ugh. THEN Sam was way upset so we decided to try the sedation again.

As soon as he was knocked out, however, his oxygen sats dropped into the 50s. Chris and I sat there listening to the alarm ring on the monitor...but no one came...and no one came...finally I got up and chased someone down. That nurse ran in, took one look at his oxygen numbers and she ran out. Within seconds the room was full of people (I'm pretty sure she called a code). All it took was to wake Sam up, and his oxygen numbers hit normal again. The sedative just made him breath really shallow. But this meant that until the sedative wore off, Sam's numbers kept dipping and we kept having to wake him up. We did this every 15 minutes ALL NIGHT LONG. Needless to say we are exhausted. We will also NEVER use that sedative again.

I laid into the nurses last night for not coming when his numbers hit 50 the first time. After that, they were in here at every minor ding from our oxygen machine. A nurse manager tried to do some damage control this morning. She let us tell our side of the story and then she apologized. She gave us some coupons for some free coffee. Whoopee.

Sam is fine now though, and actually appears to have less headache pain today. He's been generally happy, and smiling at all the nurses. Maybe we turned the corner with this headache stuff. The doctor wants to keep us until Monday or Tuesday though, just to be sure this fluid continues to come off his lungs and his oxygen continues to stay at acceptable levels.

The photos are of Sam playing with his glow worm/sea horse. We have a lamb stuffed animal that plays white noise, and between it and the glow worm, Sam stays pretty content!

~Kathy