Post Op Day 2

Today has been a good day, for the most part. The morning started out with several bouts of nausea and vomiting; but by tonight it seems to be old business. Morphine is a drug of choice for pain, but it results in more of the upset tummy. They tried changing up the pain meds and the nausea has definitely decreased.

Nicholas has had a some pain issues today. He is not one to speak up and demand things, so by the time he is in pain it is like we are chasing it and it's hard to catch up to it. He has complained that his rear end hurts from being in a bed for three days now, and he absolutely hates the chest tube drains that are sewn into his abdomen. The nurse tried to transfer him to a chair to sit in for a change, but that caused a lot of pain from the tubes. He spent a lot of the day blinking back tears because he couldn't communicate what he needed. He is much more alert today and is aware of where he is and what he's been through. 

The chest tubes are probably one of the last pieces of discomfort that will come off of him. This is because they are actively draining the fluid from inside his chest post surgery and if there is any residual bleeding, that comes out of these tubes, too. They "pulled" his LA-line, which is a monitor that is sutured to the atrium above his left ventricle. It measures the pressure as the blood dumps into the ventricle below it. The sweet spot is in the high single digits or low double digits, around 8-12. They suspected that the line was not functioning quite right and that it was safe to pull it, but it could cause internal bleeding because it is attached to the atrium with the sutures. The chest tube output did not drastically increase after this procedure was done, which indicates minimal bleeding. As all the wires and tubes come off, Nicholas is one step closer to leaving.  

I would attach a photo of my boy, how good he looks, but he is watching Netflix on my phone and I don't want to bother him. He deserves to have any gadget that distracts him from everything else going on.