Home at last

Carson was discharged late this afternoon from Childrens and we are home re-cooping from the past two days. He is in a lot of pain when his Tylenol w/ Codeine wears off and stops talking completely and kicking/hitting about 30 minutes before his next dose is due. We are almost positive the aggression is solely connected to his pain level and his inability to talk due to his throat hurting so much.

Last night was rough. He needed Morphine around 8:45 for break-through pain that caused him to start crying and screaming around 8pm. Thank goodness the ENT doc on-call was generous with his medications and Carson was pain free by 8:50 and sleeping by 9:45. He had a ton of desats all night long but they were all minor in the low to mid 80s. His baseline oxygen saturation was hanging around 90-91 so they debated adding a cannula for the night but Carson was not having anything on his face so they just watched him closely and stayed on top of his q2hr Albuterol and q4hr Flovent. He was wired this morning when he woke up and wanted to run around the room, down the hall, jump on the bed, scream, etc but REFUSED to eat or drink. Al finally got him to eat some jello, a few bites of eggs, and to drink some chocolate milk and we were cleared for discharge right before 4. Thank goodness because I did not want to stay an extra night because he wouldn't drink or eat.

We're home and resting for the next few days. Eli was "excited" to see Carson (his new favorite word is excited) and Macy licked him all over. It was obvious that our little man was much more comfortable at home than in the hospital and went right to sleep once he was in his own bed. I'm hoping the antibiotics and pain meds keep him infection and pain free for the coming weeks. Thanks for all of the well wishes. It was a new experience having Carson in surgery/recovery compared to Eli who is an old pro. It's much more tiresome with a 3.5 year old who isn't used to constant surgeries and hospitalizations than with a 20 month old who has had more than I like to count. I'm off to bed now but look for some great pics of Eli tomorrow on the blog.

Here are the pics of Carson's bronch. The top two pictures show the narrowing of his trachea (tracheal stenosis). The trachea should be a round, ring shape but as you can see, Carson's is a boxed shape with the right and left sides flattened by scar tissue. This scar tissue was caused by his intubation and ventilation during his NICU stay at birth. As I said in the previous post, he should grow out of the tracheal swelling and croup due to this narrowing in about 5 years. The bottom left picture is where his trachea splits and goes into his right and left lungs and the bottom right picture is of his vocal cords. Enjoy!