At around 1 am the nurse woke me up (per my request) to try to feed him some breastmilk. I begged that the next feeding we just went with it. He hadn't had much pedialyte but he also hadn't aspirated any of it, so the risk of a vocal cord problem was slim. He just wouldn't eat. He gagged, cried, wasn't having it. I was so discouraged. We would try again at 4 am. The time between the feedings he just wouldn't settle. He wasn't crying, just wouldn't fall asleep and stay asleep. (This was the beginning of me not sleeping longer than an hour at a time for every bit of 2 months!) We tried to feed him again at 4 and it was even worse. The nurse decided to just feed him through his NG tube until morning rounds.
Since my baby was awake all night, I was up way earlier than my routine had been so I left to take a shower at RMH earlier than usual and was back after the nurses changed shifts but before rounds. Wendy, our nurse from Hunter's big day the previous day, told me as soon as I walked in the room that she realized that Hunter was majorly "tweaking" out and having extreme drug withdraw symptoms. The day before when they cut all of his pain meds and heart meds, the ICU attending told me that he was right at the cusp of possibly withdrawing so they would wait and see (if it can happen, it happens to Hunter.....in hindsight, I would have advocated for a scheduled drug wean before the withdrawing ever happened). Wendy went right to the meds room and got a morphine bolus for him to mellow him out on until the doctors rounded and gave a drug wean plan for him. The poor baby finally started chilling out and rested.
The nurse we had the day Hunter coded came in and made him this little contraption to keep his paci in
My drug addict
Finally resting
The doctors decided to put Hunter on scheduled Morphine through his IV to combat the withdraw. They wanted to try to feed him by mouth again and he just soared through all feedings. Doubling and tripling every goal they had set. I knew my big eater would be back! A lot of kiddos after heart surgery end up hung up in the hospital because of feeding issues. Just like my gut feeling HATED that Hunter would have to go on bypass for his surgery (which was the cause of his seizure, a fluke air bubble that passed from the machine and eventually went to his brain, causing the seizure and cardiac arrest), my gut was telling me that feeding would not be an issue after his surgery. That first night I was so let down that he didn't just jump right back in. The kid just needed his drug fix!
That afternoon we had a bit of a scare as the nurse and I were standing over Hunter and she was about to start her assessments and cares of him. He woke up out of sound sleep SCREAMING. He was so upset that he went into respiratory arrest and turned the most awful shade of blue/purple I have ever seen. I started saying, somehow calmly, "Wendy, this isn't going anywhere good". I watched as his oxygen sats dropped into the 40's and she grabbed the oxygen bag and began bagging him (squeezing it to give him extra puffs of oxygen) and turned his 1 liter of flow oxygen cannula up to 10 liters. He recovered quickly and I just about crumbled to the floor. Her first words....."Cardiac kids like to do that". OMG. There was no way I could handle that again. Thankfully he never did it that bad again, but there were times at home I thought he was headed there.
After that scary moment, there weren't anymore. Hunter ate like a champ, his very weak and raspy voice and cries slowly were getting stronger. Wendy later told me that if that would have happened on the acute floor, they most likely would have "pressed the button" meaning called another Code Blue on him. Ay yay yay.......
No comments:
Post a Comment