Patience: Watching, Waiting & Holding Ground

It’s been a relatively quiet weekend here in the ICU.  I’ve come to take comfort in seeing empty rooms–it usually means less intensity and it also means fewer kids and families in distress.  Speaking more out of my own self-interest, things have been calm in 5453.  The order for the weekend is continued patience as we hope for the fluid in Rudy’s abdomen to subside.  I wish things would move faster, but I’ve learned to take calm and boring over action and excitement–the latter coupling usually isn’t comforting in these parts.

Nurse Nicole might take issue with my assessment of things being calm as our theory of Rudy being part werewolf is gaining some credibility.  Along with fingernails that resemble talons, he tends to be very calm and peaceful during the day, but then fusses up a storm during the night.  There weren’t any distressing numbers, but he managed to set the vent chime off about every 3 minutes, which had her on her feet for about 4 hours.  She came on calling him “Rudy the cutie”, but fortunately I was asleep when she left so I didn’t hear if her nickname had changed.

Watching the chyle drainage from the stomach cavity is probably something I shouldn’t do to closely.  It was down to 30cc on Friday and up to 60cc on Saturday.  More, yes, but we’re still dealing with little quantities.  The trend is down and that’s good.  It’s still being determined whether they’ll try feeding on Monday or Wednesday, but we’ll let the doctors work that out.  Rudy’s situation is all about judgment calls and it’s good to have different opinions playing off each other.  Dr. Andy has kept him on three 90 minute sprints daily and he cruises through them.  He could easily go longer, but the objective is to keep him exercised but not push him until he’s able to take on enough calories to have the energy to breathe well.

Rudy had a chest Xray this morning and his lungs look clear, but there was some concern about whether his heart was enlarged (gulp).  Dr. Maggie came in just now to do an echo as it’s been about a month since they checked and saw that everything was in order–sometimes the imagery on the Xray can be unclear.  It was great to have Maggie check as she felt that, not only was the size fine and the heart clear of fluid, but the function looks better than ever.  So, the ironic pattern is holding–we came for a heart operation, but it’s not the heart that’s keeping us here.

Please pray for this week.  When they start to feed isn’t such a concern as at this point a couple of days here or there don’t matter.  We just really want the fluid issue to be resolved.