Monday, March 7, 2011

Answers

Today we were supposed to get answers. We didn't.

We have been told for the past two weeks that today an ENT would come and take anywhere from 30-45 minutes and scope out Carter while he was on CPAP to figure out exactly why he wasn't lasting off the ventilator. When we got to the hospital our nurse Susan who is my absolute favorite had his IV line ready and was just waiting to hear back from the ENT to see when he would arrive. The respiratory team got ready to ext abate Carter and was just waiting also. We finally heard from the ENT that he would be there in ten so go to go ahead and take him off the ventilator. They ext abated Carter and put him on CPAP









He was doing surprisingly well. His heart rate was great and his saturation levels were awesome. Dr. Rone the ENT came in with a little cord that had a magnifying glass on the end. He put it down his throat and looked around for about two minutes. He came out and said it looks like he might have some swelling in his airway, his left vocal cord seems to be weaker than his right, and he may have some lung issues...... The whole time we are thinking duh we have known that these might be the issue/issues for the past three months. He goes on to say that he isn't too optimistic that he will last on CPAP and if he doesn't we will give him some time to recover (carters recovery time the last three times after a CPAP trial has usually been around a week and a half) and take him to the OR and sedate him so we can get an exact picture of what is going on.....meanwhile we are thinking hello this is what we were supposed to do today.
During this time Carter continued to do really really well on CPAP. The respiratory therapist noticed that Carter needed a size bigger nasal canula so he switched him out. It wasn't the smoothest transition and from here things went south and long story short Carter is back on the ventilator. We were pretty upset that the RT messed with him when he was doing so well. We know that if he was that sensitive he obviously wasn't going to last anyways, but we are sure that he would have lasted longer. The most frustrating part in all this is when we talked to the doctor (happened to be some doctor we have never met before annoying) after and told here what we were told was going to happen today with the scope she said yeah I thought he was supposed to do that too..... Why the heck didn't she say anything!!!

So the plan now it to let Carter recover and then when he is stable again we will take him to the OR and do the scope the way it was supposed to be done today. I hate when doctors try to cover up mistakes by playing dumb. We had a lot of that going on today. Let's just say we can't wait for Dr. Santiago to get back. Please pray that this won't set Carter back too much and that he will continue to react positively to the steroids and we can get in to scope soon.

Can't not mention that Travis is awesome. When things like this happen I tend to just get upset and only vent to him not the doctors. He didn't hold back. He let the doctor know exactly what we thought. If I remember right he said something to the effect "I know we all make human mistakes was this one?" she did not know what to say which pretty much answered his question. Ahhhh!

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1 comment:

Rene said...

What a frustrating experience. You would think these people would talk to each other. Glad you got a picture on CPAP. He is such a cutie. He'll get there.