Hey everybody. It has been a fairly slow day. Earlier today they took out the LA line. This is a wire that goes into the left atrium of his heart to measure what pressures the heart is experiencing. At this time they also changed the bandages that were on the chest tubes. They did this because he had quite a bit of bleeding over night. We were told that the bleeding amount was significant, but not surprising and did not need surgical intervention. They also cleared a blood clot out of one of the chest tubes. At that point they took him off of the sedative to see how he would do. One of the issues with heart surgery is that fluid tends to collect around the lungs. This is not a good thing. This is why they have chest tubes. These tubes go though the skin and into his chest near his heart and lungs. They allow fluid to drain out of the chest. This is also the reason he is on diuretic. Unfortunately, it is also one of the reasons he is on a fluid restrictive diet. In other words, he can't have much to drink. At first all he was allowed to do was suck water off of a sponge. After a while they let him have a few ml of water in a cup. He is not at all pleased about this. He is very thirsty and even pre surgery loved to drink from his cup. They also had an arterial line in his left hand so that he could not suck his thumb. He was very much not please about this. He was getting so agitated that they were considering putting him back on sedatives. He did manage to fall asleep with some pain meds. When he woke up, they were able to remove the arterial line from his left arm. This was a major improvement as now he can use that arm and even suck the thumb! He is very pleased about this. He even took some time to pass his toy car from one hand to the other and back again just because he could. He is now resting peacefully. He is still on oxygen and a plethora of drugs. Our next major goal is to get the chest tubes out. That should happen in the next few days. They watch the out put and also do chest x-rays to look for fluid build up. Once the tubes are out, then we will work on getting rid of the oxygen. It is possible he will go home on oxygen, but it is possible we will not. His O2 levels are good right now, but since he is on O2, it is hard to say how much that means.
OOOHHH! We get to try food! Yogurt time! There is a possibility it may come back up on us, but let's hope not!
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