recovery.....

Hey everyone! Its Karen. I am sitting beside Tucker, cant touch, but am here and I feel such relief. My baby boy is pink and doing the very best that could be expected. The "no touching" is due to the faint possibility that he is a little bit aware of his surroundings and we don't want to get him upset. His blood pressure is finally stable so we are watching but not touching. He gets upset and his pressures go haywire when they suction his tube....so they are thinking that there are times when he can feel or knows what is going on, but is paralyzed...can you just say OMG. The best I can explain this is, Tucker has had these medicines so many times that they don't work as well, and it takes more and more to keep him sedated and under. He is at his max for his blood gases....so we are doing a transfusion to try to get more blood flow therefore more sedation. Until that time..do as little as possible to him.

They did end up cooling him down. When a body is warm the vessels are relaxed and the blood pressure is low. They needed his pressure to be higher so they cooled him down 2 degrees by putting him on Tylenol, some ice blankets and turning the air down in the room. This is to let the heart rest and not work so hard pushing blood to the body. This was part of the solution in getting his blood pressure under control. It took about 4-6 hours for them to accomplish the lower temp. This also keeps infection down as bacteria cant grow if it isn't warm and cozy for them.

I stayed in the room with Tuck and Todd got a room downstairs in the hospital. I got a few winks ..enough to get me through. I like to be here, listen to what everyone is saying, figure out what machine does what, what they are adjusting and why....I had the nurse dictating everything she was doing as she did it last night. Tucker seems more comfortable today than he did last night...as they say, the dust is settling.

The banner is hung above his bed...the nurse loves all the pictures of everyone! Gotta make Tuck know how much he is loved..not that he doesn't know it already. Sissy got him a stuffed animal already, it is being used as a "prop" for his arms, legs or whatever else they need to move around.

Plan for today is pretty much the same as last night...adjust and keep him comfy so healing can continue. They are pacing his heart, stepping up the beats so as to work the heart and get the blood flowing through that left side. They came in and tested his heart rate, EKG, and it is a NORMAL rate, NORMAL heart EKG....it is a little slow for where we are right now in recovery but if it was a few days from now it would be GREAT!!! So they will continue to pace his heart at the higher rate for a while longer.

Cardiologist just came in....he said IT COULDN'T BE BETTER!!!!! He is peeing, his drain tubes are slow.....all good things!!! GO TUCK GO!!! We are so proud of our superman!!!

OK...I think that is it for now. We are in the room, Todd and Sheena just got back from showers. Hunter is still sleeping. So we are settling in.