Practicing Patience

After the "excitement" on Friday, Aaron managed to stay on the floor.  This was almost entirely due to everyone involved knowing him well, and knowing that we had the ability to bag him easily if problems developed.  Had anyone involved, from the doctor, RT and nurse on the floor to the PICU staff not been very familiar with him, we would have taken a field trip downstairs to the PICU.

We thought (and hoped!) that it would be a one-time thing, and the next several hours seemed to suggest it might be, with the exception that he was on higher oxygen needs again.  Not crazy high, but higher.  Then his 8 a.m. treatments came on Saturday.  Same thing, although not quite as dramatic.

With that, I requested a second viral panel.  That's the test to see if he's got nasties brewing, and since his panel when he was admitted was negative for everything, it had the potential of being very useful.

Remember how I wanted to get out of here before he could catch anything?  Remember how much "fun" we have with rhinovirus?  Guess whaaaaat....

Yep.  He's got it.

So we won't be going home for a few more days.  Right now, his symptoms are mostly increased oxygen needs, but not to the point where we need to be in the PICU.  In fact, where he currently is, I could support at home.  However, it hasn't hit its peak yet.  And this is the single biggest reason that we know our local paramedics so well.

Often when he's struggling, like he was when we came up, I can hyper-oxgenate him by bagging and giving him 100% oxygen and that will buy me some time, usually an hour or more.  But with rhino, once I put him back on the ventilator after bagging, he almost always drops again within a few minutes.

So we're hanging out, making sure it doesn't get worse.  We might make it those ten-plus days after all...

“Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.”

Barbara Johnson