September 14, 2013:
Cory wasn’t getting the oxygen numbers he needed. They talked about re-intubating him.
Oh-no! We were not going backwards….As if we had any control. But we pretended.
They have to do a scope in his lungs to see what might be the problem.
What’s fascinating in the ICU is everything comes to you. I guess that’s a benefit, if you are looking at the glass even a little full. There was No transferring him anywhere for a procedure where we wait in the waiting room, take a number and wait for the doctor to meet the parents in a room built for 2.5 people to tell you the results….
Nope, the equipment, the doctors, the nurses, everything came right to us. Front Door Delivery, Room 21. Bronchoscopy To-Go please.
“So, they know what amount of medication to give to sedate him properly for the procedure?? We don’t want the same thing to happen that happened with the breathing tube (where he wasn’t sedated enough and was actually awake for the procedure)….just want to make sure.”, I say to a New-to-us nurse. She had a great sense of humor and knew her stuff. Lots of casual conversation after a couple days of being together…
“Oh, yes! They are using Propofol…”Milk of Magnesia”was the nickname…he will be Out. It’s the same stuff Michael Jackson died from.”…..(errrrr….things you don’t say to the parents in the pediatric ICU….we knew she meant nothing by it. It was a jolt, though, to hear at that at that moment while looking at the milky substance pumping into our son.)
And, we, the parents, never had to leave. I kept waiting for them to dismiss us. I felt awkward, like a kid who was in the Teacher’s Lounge for lunch, waiting for them to notice I was there and send me back to the cafeteria. But instead, they handed us masks. We were in the back of the room sitting on our Bed/Chair and watched what looked like a Discovery Channel presentation. The doctor was great about informing us of what he was seeing as he went along, and had it not been being performed on my non-organ-functional son, I would have thought it was really interesting and cool. As they stuffed a looooong long tube into his mouth without any response from him….The upper lobes, the lower lobes, the brachial tubes…
I now visually knew my son from the inside out.
The organization of the human body amazes me. They found blood, but it looked like old blood, not a current bleed.
We don’t have to re-intubate him. Thanks Be.
His numbers are all going up. His bacteria that is detected every now and a day are treated. He will go back to the Bone Marrow Transplant Floor in the next few days. They are just waiting for an open room on the floor.
Back to Normal—coming soon to a theater near you.
His dad, Charlie, buys his plane ticket home to Arizona for two days later.
Life....Redefined 