A Few Setbacks

Owen continues to have issues keeping his oxygen saturations up. He sats are in the high 50's, low 60's. He has been sleeping the majority of the day, only to wake up in extreme pain. We give him an Morphine through his IV (instant relief) and he passes out.

He had an allergic reation to his blood tranfusion, which has never happened before. His entire body got splotchy. He broke out in rash spots and he was itching like mad. I put creme on him, while the nurse stopped the blood and gave him intravenous Benadryl. He is feeling much better now.

We had to use the magic of Versed (a sedative) to calm him down after his reaction to the blood. Then we had to pull back the tape on his chest dressing to allow the echo tech access to see his heart. If that wasn't bad enough, we had to pick him up and move him around for his chest xray.

The goal in everything is to try to figure out what is causing his horrible oxygen saturations.

The chest xray was great. The echo shows higher ventricle pressures, which is most likely causing the saturation issues. The higher ventricle pressures are caused because the valve was tightened and so the blood has to go through a much tighter area. Thus causing backed up pressures in his ventricle.

The plan is to increase his Diuretics to get more fluid off.

He is on high flow oxygen at EIGHT liters and he's satting at 74%.

We turned his Dopamine and Milrinone BACK on.

One step forward, two steps back. This is how it always goes and is to be expected. We're hoping to get Owen up and moving in bed soon. He has been in so much pain that he hasn't wanted to sit up. Read my last post for more updates. Ideally, he'll be up blowing bubbles, watching movies and interested in eating. That is the plan.

Rest. Get him to a more stable place. Watch him carefully. He'll definetly be hanging out in ICU another day... no step down unit today.

There is no rush in his recovery. He will do things on his own time. We are proud of how far he has come thus far.