Saturday Morning and a Holding Pattern

9:31 a.m.  Aaron had a fairly quiet night, medically speaking.  My teenage wanna-be played most of the night with his toys.  He was also sad and crying quite a bit, at least for him.  His heart rate is still on the high side, so we’re not on our way yet.  He doesn’t act like he’s in pain.  In fact, when he cried during the night, we’d suction him and pull out some thicker secretions and he’d calm down.  And he plays pretty vigorously with his toys.  But it may be that the post-op stress on his body is elevating his heart even though he’s not showing signs of pain.  So for now, we’ve added Lortab (similar to Tylenol but with a narcotic component) to the Motrin to see if that helps.  He got the Lortab almost an hour ago, and another dose of Motrin 20 minutes ago, but no change yet.  He’s still in the upper 160’s instead of down in the lower 100’s.  We’ll watch for a couple of hours and reassess.

1:00 p.m.  Aaron is still quite high on his heart rate.  The Motrin/Lortab really didn’t seem to do anything for him.  In the last hour, he’s also gone from needing 1.5 liters of oxygen to using 3 liters.  The next step is that maybe his digestive system is a little backed up, so he’ll get some “help” there.  If he poops and his heart rate comes down, we’re out of here.  If not, then we’ll look at some labs and other things to see if he’s retained more fluid than we thought and if he needs a diuretic.  I’m grateful they’re not rushing us out of here.  There were a couple times over the winter when we went home only to turn around and come back very quickly.  That is truly dispiriting.  Much, much better to just stick it out a little longer.  It doesn’t mean we won’t be home today, but if we are, it’s likely I’ll be fighting game traffic.  Or maybe I’ll wait until the game has started before heading out.  Basically, we’re in a holding pattern here…