Let the tubes come out.

We spent last night in a sleep room at the hospital. Both Mandi and I were pretty exhausted and happy to have a dark room to lay our heads. We almost always sleep with a fan. Last night we obviously did not have our precious fan but let me tell you that it did not matter. We set the alarm clock, although I knew I would not need its assistance. I woke up in the morning with Claire on my mind. We quickly got our things together and headed to see how Claire was doing. The first news that we heard was that somehow Claire had pulled her PICC line out during the night. We knew this was going to be pretty bad since she has had such a hard time getting IVs.


How many sticks
Does a Claire Bear need
To get a line for blood?
That seemed to be the question. Luckily, early in the morning, the Radiology Team came up and put a new PICC line back in. Success. If only this was the last stick she was to receive today.

The day persisted with Claire slowing getting tubes removed. First was the Aertial Line, then the pacer wires, then the Aortic Line, then the Chest tube. She seemed to be doing fairly well during this process. Then we found out that the team wanted to try and get a peripheral IV in again. Obviously, this was alarming for us as she has had such trouble with these sticks. I counted... 3 sticks in each foot, 4-5 sticks per arm, and one in the head. I mean come on... 17 sticks for a little one plus a PICC line not once, but twice. That is a lot of bruising over the next month just from IVs. The IV team was not successful so they Doctors will need to monitor her reaction to the heparin drip in another fashion. I guess this is where Mandi's experience as a Cardiac Nurse (for adults) came in handy as she suggested to the Nurse Practitioner how they monitor the heparin drip at Riverside on 3 Heart. The team decided to use that technique given the circumstances. (By the way, if you want the details, email her because I didn't get the whole flush the lines for 5 mins thing).
Claire has continued to have a tougher night as they continue to ween her off of the pain medication. Now that she is becoming more awake, she really does not like the oxygen in her nose. I found that to be a very fast way to make her mad when I accidently tried to fix it. Sorry sis.
We were happy to be able to feed sis bear some pedialyte and then some milk. She ate it right down. We were happy to see this as there is no guarantee that little heart babies will continue to enjoy food from one surgery to the next.

Mandi and I are hopeful that tonight goes well. Maybe, just maybe we can get out of the Cardiac ICU and onto a step down floor. There is just something about Intensive Care Unit that is scary.
We appreciate your thoughts and prayers.