January
2008
More on Tubes0
Though late, the surgery on Monday went well. Dorrie was pretty displeased with the world while she was NPO, so it was a relief when they finally came to take her. The 2 procedures (G-Tube and ears) only took about an hour and then she was back.
Like when she had her eye surgery, it took her a lot longer than anesthesia claimed it would to shake off the effects of what they gave her. She came back up still on the vent, but woke up enough to protest that in about an hour. But she wasn’t really quite prepared to be extubated, as the lingering remains of the pavulon kept causing her to pass out again and forget that she needed to be breathing. So we had an exciting few hours of it from about 5-10 where she kept needing to be bagged every 10-15 minutes.
At that point the joint decision was made to put her on CPAP for a while to see if the pressure would help minimize the amount of work she needed to do and if the irritation of it would help keep her from losing focus. Whether it was the length of time that had passed or the CPAP, her issues almost immediately vanished. After one last issue (resolved by stim only) at around 1am, she was able to keep herself going for the rest of the night.
By the following morning the last of the anesthesia seemed gone and we were able to move her back to her low flow again and she got to try some food. It seemed quite fast to me but she was back to full feeds by mid-morning (they even increased her amount!!). So far, 48h post insertion, she appears to be tolerating things well. She’s still very cranky, but it’s less than it was yesterday so we’re hopeful that by the end of the week she’ll be feeling completely herself again.
The ear tubes apparently threw the ICN for a loop. Though hardly unusual, they’re mainly for babies a bit older than Dorrie so they do not recollect ever having had a patient get them. Doesn’t seem like they require much maintenance, though (some drops for a few days), so it shouldn’t really add much to their workload.