Milo Man

Tuesday January 26 continued much of the same way. Taking lots of time to communicate with Milo, thus reducing his anxiety and restlessness. Around 7 his nurse and I gave him a full bath. We did it in bed but it felt oh so good to Milo. He was so happy and relaxed the whole time. Then I massaged lotion all over his body. He calmed down and rested till his 10pm vesting and then they gave him some Benadryl to see if that would help him sleep better.

The night was pretty rough. It’s a lot harder to be patient enough at 1 am to figure out what a boy wants. So the nurses used a lot more medication than I would have liked, but I was out of it too.

This morning we started into the same routine of getting his tubes out. I knew he was ready but it was convincing everyone else that he was. When the respiratory therapist came in to check for any leaks (if there is a leak in the air tube that means the swelling has gone down) he said that he thought he heard a “pop”. I got very excited. He informed me that did not mean there was a leak, only a pop. Whatever, take the thing out. He just laughed. I informed him that I might not be a medical professional but I am a mom and I know my son is ready to have his tube out.

I told the attending doctor the same thing. She too chuckled at me. Did they think I was kidding??

About an hour later we got the official word, the tube would be out today. Well, that was promising. Now we only had 13 hours to wait….

The next thing I knew the attending doctor walks in and says ‘Well, it’s now or never.’ Within 15 minutes Milo was breathing entirely on his own. No problems at all. He is breathing really well actually and everyone was pleasantly surprised. They do have some humidified oxygen on his face to make sure all is well for the rest of the day.

As soon as everyone left Milo motioned me to come near him. He was trying to tell me something. I kept trying to guess. Finally in a VERY raspy voice he says ‘I’m very, very hungry.’ Yep the first words out of his mouth after 8 days is ‘I’m very very hungry.’ Too bad he can’t swallow yet. They said they don’t let them have anything for about 4 hours. Unfortunately Milo won’t get anything to really eat for the next 3 weeks. But I won’t break that news to him quite yet……

I’m so very grateful for all the love and support we have felt. I’m grateful to my Heavenly Father for giving me the assurance I needed that Milo would be ok, no matter when they decided to take out the tube. I’m grateful for my girls who wait so patiently to come home and see their brother and mom and dad again. They are so awesome.

It’s all down hill from here. We should be out within the next three days. But don’t count on it. Things around here change about every minute…..

Here are some pictures:

[Part of the extracting team. There was the attending doctor, the fellow, respiratory therapist, Milo’s anesthesiologist, his nurse, Carole from the craniofacial team, a resident and me. Boy were we all happy to have that tube out!!]

[No more breathing tube! Yay!!]

[Relaxing after a hard morning!]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.