~The Speth Family~: Another Week at the Hospital

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Another Week at the Hospital

Ammon finally escaped the CICU! They sent him to the Children's Surgical Unit on Monday evening to work on weening him from the oxygen and a few medications so he can come home. It turns out none of that weening is going to happen, but they are sending him home anyway!!!! yay? This unit is super mellow compared to the ICU. They told John and I to be there as much as possible so we can learn to care for him by ourselves. I figured it should be a snap - Allie required a lot of care when she came home from the NICU so how much more could it be?

A LOT. They have tried SEVERAL times to wean him completely off of the oxygen (he is only on .03 to .06), but for some reason he seems to have hit his thresh hold - so he's coming home on oxygen. John spent Monday night with him and got about 5 hours sleep if you add it all together (ok secretly I was hoping since Ammon has had to stay so long in the hospital he would come home on a pretty decent schedule and sleep for at leat five hours straight - I was soooo wrong). I spent half of Tuesday until late Wednesday with Ammon. Those nurses don't mess around. I was only there a short time when they made me stick him with a needle. And the needles don't go in as easily as you would think - I had to push a little. That first one made me kind of sad.

Most of his meds go in his feeding tube so we had to learn to give him all of those as well - and when I say all, I mean ALL. He is on a lot of medications. Some are once a day, some twice and even three times. After being given a quick rundown and making me do it myself, I asked the nurse if someone was going to write all of that down for me - no worries, they are. Can I request a chart? I like charts.

Last night was CRAZY. I slept about 2-3 hours total. Ammon was having more withdrawls except his symptoms came on one at a time so it took us a little more than half of the night to figure out what was going on. Maybe because I was the only one in with him most of the time and I thought I was just being over protective. I spent most of the night rocking him - it was nice. And even though he was super fussy and uncomfortable, I am kind of glad I had the experience because I learned so much about withdrawls and how to recognize it early so I will be able to help him avoid future discomfort. The nurse thought he had gas.

AND - this is my favorite part - someone finally convinced them to send us home with a pulse oxcimiter! We had one with Allie and it saved her bacon several times. I don't think Ammon needs one to save his life, but I have definitely learned how to use his stats to determine what is going on with him and what needs to be done to fix it. Although I think we might have done it without the monitor, it will be MUCH, MUCH easier with it! I think they changed their minds about letting us have it because of the oxygen, so I am actually THANKFUL that he is still on that little bit.

John is there tonight because I had to come home for Kylie's SEP's. He said they are in the middle of Ammon's car seat test and things are going well. The nurses seem very confident that John and I can handle it after our "tests" - I guess we will find out on Friday morning when we bring him home!!!

Side note - The other night John said he and the nurses in the CICU had Ammon smiling and cooing like crazy. Last night (before the withdrawls) he started again - AHHHHH! He has the most gigantic, CUTEST smile ever!!! I got the camera out to capture it, but unfortunately he was pretty weirded out by the camera. I'm not sure what he was thinking - he looked confused and scared and wouldn't stop staring at it! So I missed the smile, but its still kind of fun to watch...

1 comment:

JulieFebruary 4, 2010 at 7:56 AM
oh cutest thing ever! It's funny how hard we work to get a tiny smile out of them, but it's all worth it! Those dang fevers, I'm sorry about that.
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