Chest Tube Out

That darn morphine makes me so itchy

All dressed, sitting up and eating like a big boy after tube removal

Resting in his new room

Connie got a PRN dose of morphine and 1/2 dose of versed for the chest tube removal. He had been sleeping but woke up. He actually seemed pretty okay with it and laid nice and still. His stitches didn't close the wound all the way, but got it close. That meant they had to use a special dressing that has to stay on 24-48 hours. The plan from here is to eat, walk, lose the other two tubes, make sure pain is under control, and get all the discharge testing. The way it usually works is they pull the other tubes (whenever they stop draining, who knows when that will be) and then the next day they echo, do a chest x-ray and do a pacemaker interrogation. As long as everything looks good after that and his pain is well controlled without IV meds, he'll be discharged. He's going home on Enalapril, Lasix and the thyroid med he was taking before. He'll come off the lasix probably in a few weeks and depending on how his echo looks and how the minimal the leaking is, he may be able to just outgrow his dose of enalapril. I'm still unsure if he'll go home on amiodarone. Dr. Bradley had said that he does send some kids hom on it for a few months, but they aren't giving it to him so far. The only reason for the thyroid med was because of what the amio was doing to his thyroid, so I'm not sure why he still needs that, but that's a question for closer to discharge or when we get home. After his tube was pulled, he ate a whole bowl of cinnamon toast crunch and drank 1/2 carton of chocolate milk. The nurse couldn't believe he wasn't passed out from the sedation they gave. Every single time he wakes up he asks to eat. I think it's because he's afraid that we're going to withhold at some point since he's been NPO so often lately. Now he's snoozing and we're doing some laundry.