Saint Marys - Day 12 - Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! While Saint Marys isn't the ideal place to spend the holiday, we do have a lot to be thankful for. Garrett made it through his second procedure all right, and looked good enough this morning that they sent him out of the PICU and back to the general floor already.

Dr. Cloft said they embolized three more large arteries with yesterday's procedure, and commented that three is about all Garrett can take at a time right now. He mentioned that if they could have closed off one more during Garrett's first procedure, that probably would have been all he needed. Although embolizing one might have been enough to reduce the strain on his heart and send him home this time around, they weren't going to waste the opportunity and decided to get as much as they could. Dr. Lanzino even commented that one of the three was probably the largest one Garrett had.

Dr. Cloft and Dr. Lanzino are two more of my favorite doctors. Not only have they done an excellent job getting Garrett through these tough treatments, they also have a generally reassuring demeanor, like Dr. Arteaga, that parents need as badly as we need air to breathe in times like these. (Not that it affects patient care, but Dr. Lanzino also has a wonderful accent that I could listen to all day.)

There are still a number of arteries shunting directly to the vein, so Garrett will still need to come back for more procedures when he's bigger. However, Dr. Cloft also mentioined that sometimes the smaller arteries clot off on their own over time. He said he didn't want to get our hopes up, but if we were praying for a Christmas miracle, that'd be a good one to pray for. Did I mention that we like Dr. Cloft, too? =)

Garrett's cardiologists thought he was doing so well this morning that they've adjusted his medication again. They were even quite impressed that they couldn't hear the bruit (the whooshing sound of blood flowing) through his fontenelle anymore. After the procedure yesterday, they decided to take him off the digoxin (medicine that helped give his heart a "stronger squeeze"). And ater checking on him this morning, they decided to eliminate one of the two diuretics he's been on and reduce the other one, Lasix, from three times a day to once a day.

This afternoon, however, the pediatric inpatient folks have noticed he's still breathing somewhat fast (although looking much more comfortable than before) so they're talking to the cardiologists about switching the Lasix to twice a day instead of once to see if that makes the difference. Either way, depending so much less on medicine must mean they feel the heart is coping quite well on its own.

He was really sleepy after the breathing tube was taken out yesterday. He was kind of waking up from the sedation and getting agitated with it, and just as the nurse was getting ready to take it out anyway, I guess he pulled it most of the way out on his own. Chris said he must want to get out of here as badly as we do. At this rate, he'll be driving himself home.

Before his first breathing tube was taken out, the respiratory guy said usually infants will either be ornery cusses afterward, or will just sleep it off. Apparently Garrett takes after me in dealing with stress by snoozing. This time, the tube was taken out in the early afternoon, and he didn't really wake up until 7:15 p.m. I thought he'd wake up a few times before that, because he squirmed a little and cried for a short period, but he wouldn't stay awake long enough to eat until the evening.

After that, though, he was in a good routine of eating every two hours. Chris and I took advantage of the PICU sleep room being available, and Garrett's night nurse, Gretchen, just came and knocked on the door when Garrett was ready to eat. She always apologized for waking me up, but with the nurses taking care of changing diapers and comforting Garrett if he wasn't hungry, I told her that even with being woken up frequently this was probably the best sleep I'd be getting in a while.

As for the rest of the day, it sounds like it'll be more waiting and watching Garrett's vital signs to see how well he's doing after the procedure and with the change of medication. Grandma Pam treated us to lunch when she visited, and Jean and Steve will be bringing Jonathan out later.

Of course, we'd rather be spending Thanksgiving at home with our family, but, all things considered, this hasn't been too bad. If we were still waiting for the results of another procedure, it would be hard to feel thankful (it would be hard to feel anything other than anxiety), but now we can breathe more easlily and expect things to keep improving.