Day 1 Post-Op

I will warn you that the pictures in this post may bother you. They show all of his lines and tubes. So, if you don't want to see him like that, don't scroll all the way to the bottom.

So far Landon has had a pretty good day. We learned the first time around that we shouldn't rush things, so we are staying calm and taking things one step at a time. Late this morning Landon was extubated. In order to do this, the slowly took him off the medicine that kept him asleep. He has done great since he was extubated! He is still receiving oxygen, but he is breathing on his own. He was on fentanyl for his pain, but they have suspended that and are giving him tylenol every six hours for pain and morphine as needed. He is on a variety of other drugs, Lasix to remove any extra fluid, a steroid to help with swelling, he receives breathing treatments to help with swelling from his breathing tube. (I'm sure there are more and I just can't remember them all!) He has many tubes and wires attached. He has three chest tubes, two pacemaker wires that go to his heart, a catheter, three IVs, a patch on his back to monitor his kidneys, a patch on his forehead to monitor his brain, a pulse/ox button on his toe, and of course the leads that monitor his vital signs. Last night a team from EEG came and put 23 electrodes on his head to monitor his brain activity to make sure that he didn't have a stroke or seizure. Once they extubated him, they removed those electrodes also.

We are told his is doing very well. His heart is functioning great and his breathing is much better. The doctors were concerned about the possibility of his diaphragm being damaged, but they did a chest xray and saw that it is fine. He isn't waking up too much. A couple of times he opened his eyes for Nick. He is a bit restless, but seems to be comfortable. The doctors are hoping that he will wake more tomorrow and will possibly start eating. We'll see...like I said, we aren't rushing anything. As before, we are very pleased with the care he is receiving. One of the surgeons stopped in today and said that he will be here all weekend and would like to be able to send him home at that time. We aren't getting too excited about that. Landon likes to do things on his own time, kind of like his dad.

These were from last night. In the bottom one, you can kind of see the machine he is connected to for medications. He also has wrist restraints so he doesn't pull anything out. Those have been taken off. We used socks as mittens and have even taken those off for a while also. However, as he wakes more they might have to be put back on.