Never a Dull Moment

Brian stayed last night and reported this morning was great. He said that Gabe was laughing and giving kisses. Many nurses came in to see him and he would blow kisses to everyone. I didn't get there until about 11:00 and he was getting tired and was crying. Brian said that he had only slept about 4 hours and had been up since 4:00 a.m. He was continuing to fuss, so the nurses figured it was a good time to pull his chest tube. He was a little shaky at the time, which they attributed to stopped the precedex (sedative) this morning. They gave him Versed (our favorite) and he did ok to get that out. They pulled many things at that time. We enjoyed the rest of the Versed time with a wagon ride. He was waving to all of the people in ICU, he was the social attraction of the day. Brian finally went home around 3 to sleep. Gabe started to fuss and I decided to try to put him down. That is when the fun stopped.

It turns out that his shakes were a withdrawal from the medicine. He was so agitated and he was thrashing in his crib. He was crying for about 3 hours. There was nothing I could do to sooth him, it was horrible. Even when I would hold him (which I FINALLY got to do today) he was push me away. They gave him Adavan a couple times during the day to help with this withdrawal, but he reacted to that and the medicine made it worse.

I was so upset because Gabe needed sleep so bad, but he was really fighting it. We decided that the Adavan was making it worse, the Nurse Practitioner agreed and gave him Chloral Hydrate to sleep. They said it could take 45 minutes to kick in and he was still phrasing and really fighting me. I had to halfway lay on him to keep him from trying to stand up for the hour it took for the medicine to work. He was so over tired and angry, it was one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do. A couple of times, I had to walk away and the nurse would come in and take over.

He has now been asleep for a little over 3 hours and it has been great. This is really what he needs. Brian came back after only a couple hours of sleep. I really don' t know how he is managing with such little sleep. But he is so darn stubborn, I can't get him to stay at home more. Hopefully, we will be home by the weekend and Brian can relax a little more there. Thanks for the continued prayers. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.