Saturday, November 8, 2008

Recovery

Today was a pretty low key day for Lewis and tomorrow should be more of the same. He's pretty heavily sedated and on pain meds - otherwise he'd be ticked off about the breathing tube and the two IVs - but he seems to be recovering well. They have him resting in an open bed with radiant heat, so that they can easily monitor all the stuff he's got going on. In addition to the IVs and breathing support, he's got the g-tube itself hooked up right now to help his stomach drain anything left from the surgery. When he's fully recovered, the g-tube will only be attached when he's feeding. The actual fitting on his stomach is called a 'button' and looks like one - it only sticks out from his stomach 1/4" or so.

Medically, Lewis' blood pressure is a little bit high (not uncommon after they pump you full of fluids for surgery) and he's on some asthma type medicine because the breathing tube seems to make him wheeze a bit. There's also some swelling in his abdomen, but nothing unexpected, we're told. The good part is that he doesn't seem to need the ventilator much, if at all. (The ventilator is set up to provide support only when the baby is below certain levels of breathing frequency and depth, and Lewis is maintaining those levels on his own). We expect he'll have the breathing tube out tomorrow night or monday morning. Lewis will begin to be weaned from the sedation at that point as well.

We didn't figure Nate was ready to see Noodles with all this going on, so hopefully we'll get him in to visit later in the week.

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