Last night was another tough one - Landon seemed to sleep a little more restfully (not as much jumping awake) which was good but he still woke up quite a bit. With assessments every 4 hours, pain medications often due in between assessments, and his own discomfort he woke up every hour or two. We ended up not giving the melatonin because with all of the other medications we had to give and his level of anger we decided to skip it. We're hoping as he gets more food in his belly he'll get more comfortable and sleep more soundly.
His eating and drinking has been pretty poor still so we are are offering him anything and everything to get him to eat (rice krispy treats for lunch? no problem!) but when he says no to cookies and french fries it is clear that nothing sounds good to him. We did get him some pizza for dinner (and took off the cheese) and avocado and he finally ate a little bit of that so we were very encouraged to see him finally start to show some interest in eating even small amounts.
He managed to pull/kick out the IV in his foot early this morning so as of right now he has no IV access. Which is great for his comfort but not so great if they need to draw blood or give him a medicine by IV. We are hoping that they don't need to put in a line for any reason before he gets discharged but if they have to draw blood they might go ahead and put one in just in case. His white blood cell count was high at the last labs they drew which at this point is a 1 time thing so they'll check it tomorrow and see if it's still high to see if they need to treat more agressively for some type of infection. He's still on the antibiotic for whatever was happening in his lungs the day of surgery but that's not a major concern at the moment.
He is still having a lot of drainage from his chest tubes and his xray today showed that there is some fluid that still needs to come out on one side so he'll have to have the chest tubes at least one more day. He still shows a lot of discomfort but he seemed to be more comfortable than he was yesterday since getting out the IV in his neck. Giving him medicine has become a real challenge. He takes his few meds at home every day with no complaints but being in the hospital has changed that so when we have to give him 5 or 6 oral medications at one time, it is very difficult to get him to cooperate. Sometimes he even works himself up so much that he throws up the medication and then we have to dose it again. Little rewards have not been effective so far in getting him to comply so medicine time is tough for all of us right now.
All in all he's taking baby steps to being more comfortable and eating better. We're all tired from last night and the exhaustion of today so hoping for a more restful night than the last few and for tomorrow to be another step in the right direction.
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