Choppy Waters...but Smooth Sailing Ahead

This weekend was a little rough on Hudson. Late Saturday and early Sunday he had a couple of episodes of dark brownish vomitting (old blood). He showed all the signs of a gastrointestinal bleed. They stopped all his feeds and started him on IV nexium as well as put down a nasogastric tube to evacuate the rest of the old blood pooled in his stomach. He was a little anemic but with time his blood work came back normal. He was a liitle cranky the past couple of days at times due to lack of food...poor guy. He has also had some wonderful moments of being very awake, alert and happy! Today he went back into the OR for another bronchoscopy to look into his airway and possible extubation. The ENT and cardiothoracic surgeon seemed pleased with his healing but felt that they would need to leave him on the ventilator another 24-48 hours to get all the swelling down from the trauma of the surgery today. He has been pretty uncomfortable tonight..and he ended up having to be sedated and paralyzed AGAIN so that they could change out the size of his tube (where oxygen is delivered via ventilator) due to a bad air leak. Poor guy is going through the ringer! They currently have him on IV steroids to reduce all his swelling from all the trauma today, but the good news is that they feel pretty confident that they will be able to get him off the ventilator tomorrow or thursday.....YEAH!! Hudson will be much happier without that big tube and so will mommy and daddy!!!