Day 3

10:00 pm - Remember when I said that no news is good news?  Well, I have some news.  This afternoon, Hayes's left lung collapsed from all of the pressure being placed on it with his newly inserted organs.  Not in our plans, but not very surprising either.  Just imagine having a beach ball shoved into your abdomen and the reaction that your lungs would have.  The doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists sprung into action right away.  He is being given aggressive breathing treatments regularly in an effort to help reinflate his lung, and his ventilator settings are being adjusted accordingly too.  Although this gave Mommy and Daddy quite a scare, everyone has reassured us that everything is under control...and we should be back on track for extubation soon.  Prayers!  As if all of the lung issues were not enough, Hayes also had his intravenous pain medication discontinued this evening.  He still has the epidural to block the pain in his abdomen, but stopping the other has caused him to wake up quite a bit.  It breaks my heart to see him so upset and confused, and I have shed many tears as I try to reassure him (and myself) that this is all for the greater good.

1:00 pm - Nothing but good news since the morning update.  After bringing up the swelling at both sets of rounds (pediatric surgery and PICU) and a little persuading from our nurse, the doctors finally gave the okay to switch out that pesky catheter.  And what a difference that made!  As soon as the catheter was removed, he instantly started urinating...and has not stopped since.  I have never been so happy to see pee!  The swelling is slowly going down, and he seems much more comfortable without all of that excess fluid in his system.  As a result, his ventilator settings have been able to be lowered and he is one step closer to extubation too.  So looking forward to losing some of these tubes!

8:00 am - Okay, so I was planning on only giving three updates a day from now on...but pediatric surgery stopped by just a few minutes after pressing publish on my last entry and decided to do a dressing change.  I immediately grabbed my camera and frantically started taking pictures as the bandages came off, and I was way too excited to wait until this afternoon to share them with all of you.  Brace yourself.  The changes are amazing...

6:00 am - Thankfully, we had another very uneventful night.  Swelling continues to be our biggest problem, and he once again got a dose of medicine to help with that.  (This is now his third one.)  Basically, his catheter is too small and not helping him urinate as it should.  (Cody says that they just underestimated his manhood, so we will go with that!)  Replacing the catheter would be very difficult with all of the swelling as well as his circumcision, and they are not able to determine if it can be pulled quite yet.  So, if you are looking for a specific prayer for our little boy - pray for pee!  One other little event that happened over night is that he had to have his ET tube (ventilator tubing) repositioned.  On the x-ray, they were able to see that it had moved up a little...probably because of his grabiness when he began waking up...so, they had to go in and put it back where it belongs.  This procedure requires an extra dose of sedatives, so he is super sleepy this morning.  Just like his mama.