A little progress...

Rob had a little bit of a rough night last night. He was having some breathing problems so they did another CT Scan overnight to check for blood clots that might have moved from his legs to his lungs. But nothing showed up like that. So that was great to hear. They are still seeing fluid around his left lung so they are going to drain that tomorrow morning. This is another procedure that can be done right in his bed so we're still staying out of the Operating Room. They will put a line into his left lung area to drain that fluid. They will leave it in there to have a continuous drain. If after a couple days it isn't draining anything more, they will remove it and close up the tiny incision. They are hoping that by draining this fluid, it will help him make more progress on lower his ventilator settings. The back part of his lungs aren't inflating as much as they would like them to so they are going to get him into a higher sitting position as much as they can to help that part of his lungs inflate more. Still no signs of pnemonia from any of the cultures so that is great news too. Overnight they had to increase his oxygen level to 65% but they are going to slowly back that down again today as they can. He is still at a PEEP level of 9.

Since he was on the lowest IV level of Ativan (sedation medication) that he could be on yesterday, they have removed that IV now. They are now giving it to him every 4 hours into another line so he isn't on a constant drip. That will allow them to decrease that level even more. Since he gets it every 4 hours, he is pretty sleepy for a while after he gets that dose but as he gets closer to his next dose, he wakes up a little more. He woke up for me at the last visit and focused on me pretty good. I didn't get much more response from him than that but seeing his eyes was good enough for me.

They are decreasing the dose of methadone that he is getting for pain as well. He doesn't seem to be in much pain anymore so that's great. Any medication they can remove will allow him to come out of that fog that he's been in for a long time. Less medication is better!

So he's made a little progress with medication levels and hopefully tomorrow after the tube is put into his lung area, he'll make more progress with his breathing. He's still heading in the right direction!

Kelly