Doing Better

I'm feeling much better now. Thank you all so much for your encouraging words. It means a lot to us. I had some friends from my life group drive up today and they took me out to lunch and ice cream! And they brought frozen meals from our church family. Mmm, we can't wait to eat them! Before they left we also had some prayer time for Drew. So that was refreshing. Thanks for making the long drive ladies!

TNLG ladies

They did the bronchoscopy around 11:30 and sucked up some good secretions and this one crazy looking clot. There was another really big one in there, but they couldn't get it out. They put some bronchozyme on it to try to loosen it up and scheduled him for another bronchoscopy for tomorrow.

Setting up for the bronch

A very flattering picture of the back of the doctor and the RT during the bronch

The x-ray a few hours later looked better. Since there was no talk of extubating today they restarted his fentanyl drip (for pain) because he was requiring doses every hour. The fever is back under control. I was feeling like not much progress had been made, but the nurse did point out that the diuretics are working and Drew's fluids were negative today, and that is good news. There was one scary episode where Drew's heart rate went up into the 180s (he's been in the 130s) for six minutes, but the doctor just watched him and it went back down on it's own. I told the doctor he might have to stand at the foot of Drew's bed and just watch him so he behaves. Dan said he thinks Drew was just showing off what he can do with his fancy new heart.

Dan took Ava home to put her to bed tonight because she has been missing her mommy & daddy. He is going to stay with her and Grandma Kathy and I will go home later after visiting with Drew for a while. Most of our visitors will be back to work tomorrow so it will be quiet around here. My mom is going to watch Ava tomorrow, but we're not sure if it will be at the hotel or at Kathy's house yet. Oh, I forgot to mention that I did bring Ava in to see Drew yesterday. She had been asking about him so I took her back to see him. She said "Drew sleeping" and "owies right there?" We told her that he did have owies but he had medicine to make him feel better. Then she got kind of scared and said "no want to go there" so we took her back out. She asked again for him later and we brought her in again, with similar results. Hopefully he'll get the tube out soon and then he won't look so scary to her.

Here's a short video of the beginning of the bronchoscopy: