7. Pain management
June 9 2014
How many of you read the part where we weren’t doing oxy and/or morphine and thought to yourselves uh oh
We learned our lesson- we’ll add that to the list of parenting mistakes we’ve achieved for far. :)
Otto was napping, the nurse was watching him for us while we went down to get food, I had big plans to take a shower. We thought we were smooth sailing for the rest of the night. Hah.
Otto was a owie little guy. It took about 15 minutes for the drugs to take affect. Of course it felt much longer. It didn’t help that he yanked out the IV that had been in his foot artery. It also didn’t help that the hospital bottle warmer is a load of hooey.
Here’s a little tip for all you pump, freeze, defrost, warm and feed moms out there. If you have a trip to the hospital you’d best bring your own bottle warmer. Depending on the nurse you have you’ll either have to hide it (because some nurses tell you its against policy) or they’ll not say a thing or reprimand you. We’re not totally sure how our nurse feels so we’re currently being a bit discreet. Fifteen minutes is an eternity when your kiddo is hungry and screaming and the bottle that’s been “warmed” in the hospital warmer for 10 minutes comes back so warm its almost like you’ve been cupping it in your hands for the last 20 minutes.
Once we discreetly used our warmer after he flipped his lid at the cold milk things settled down. His new IV was put into his hand which means that he’s currently tubed up in both hands and he can’t use them. It’ll be a giant problem tomorrow when he’s more with it and can’t use either one of them. He’s kinda loopy and he’s already trying to figure out how to pull everything out. I came up with a clever solution- you’ll see in the picture. Though tomorrow when he’s coming back to earth from the cloud he’s been on he’s not going to like my solution at all.
Nick is at mom’s house for the night. I’m showered and hunkering down in my lavish hospital spa room. Otto-bot usually goes to sleep at 8pm. He’s been down for about a half hour after fussing and trying to get his hands free so we’ll see if this slumber lasts all night long. He has pain management interruptions on his horizon so hopefully he just wakes up, takes his delicious yum yum drugs then drifts back off.
We’re trying to get him to take all his meds orally because if that is accomplished he’ll be moved to the floor sooner. This just means they’ll wake him up to do it so we’ll see if he falls right back to sleep .
Can’t believe this day is almost done. We’ve been thinking about this day for many minutes, hours, days, weeks and months. Goodness- how lucky we are to have Children’s so close, to have so much confidence in our medical team, to have the ability to take care of this before it had any permanent impact on his body. Just thank goodness. I feel such gratitude.
Our plan is to stay ahead of the pain. Every two hours he’ll get something- tylenol or whichever other pain reliever they ended up giving him. His neck is stiff, he’s not terribly comfortable, he’s all wired up and he’s not at home but all things considered- things are amazing.
Will me and his daddy ever recover? Ah probably not. We’re still not over his last visit to the ICU. Its funny, we recognize a lot of the staff here. Its probably too early to say but a planned time in the ICU seemed to be WORLDS less stressful than an unplanned trip like we had in April. We’ll know the absolute verdict in a few days but so far this is a breeze compared to last time.
His last visit is a story for another time.
With all of our love to each of you- your prayers and loving thoughts floated us through today. Ah gosh- a code blue is going off for some little one on the floor below us. We are good- go ahead and redirect your prayers to that little one. Children’s is such a heavy place to be.
xoxo
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