So Rowan has a tendency to come out of procedure and look absolutely fantastic for the first day or two. Everyone gets excited and pushes him forward in recovery…and then Rowan needs to take a step back because we rushed him.
That’s what happened yesterday.
To be honest, I was a bit distraught yesterday. I felt really withdrawn and unsettled and anxious after they extubated him. I had to leave the hospital for a medical procedure and when I made it back, they had already pulled his breathing tube and he looked horrible. I was nervous that extubating yesterday was too soon and would have asked that they give him a little longer, had I been there. I felt guilty for leaving instead of rescheduling my appointment. His blood gases started to look bad (CO2 in the 60s) despite having PO2s in the 50s. He looked like he was breathing harder and he wasn’t very active or awake.
He also started to get really puffy.
We had some family visit him and they remarked on how good he looked a lot but all I could think was that he wasn’t ok. He may look good but I didn’t think he was ok. I didn’t feel happy and excited that his tube was gone. I was just sick with worry, despite the fact that the doctor taking care of him said everything else looked really good and that we were just going to see if he could ride out the imbalanced blood gases. No one else was worried. They were just watching him.
Overnight, his blood gases continued to get worse.
This morning, they decided to reintubate him and we were both somewhat relieved. It stinks to see progress reversed, but Rowan can’t be trusted to get that well that fast.
He is now showing signs of struggling to adjust to his new blood flow. This is pretty normal and most kids level out after a few days. We are hoping that’s the case.
In the meantime, he’s paralyzed and they aren’t making any real changes so we tried to stay away from the hospital this afternoon. It’s hard to see your kid paralyzed because they always look like crap. Tomorrow we’re hoping his levels look fantastic and we can start progressing again….slowly.
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