I woke up early this morning, around 6 AM, and decided to get up and go back to the hospital so I could talk to Mikie’s evening nurse Amanda before she went off shift.  Mikie had a pretty good night but did get to hiccupping and she tried cleaning his mouth and he gagged and it went downhill from there.  She said it wasn’t a lot, and that with that and the suction through the night they only got about 100 ml.  After she left and I started to settle in I noticed that the suction was off and since he was a little agitated and hiccupping I turned it back on and drew off another 200 ml.  I thought it was safe to clean his mouth since it was very junky and up it came for me, adding another 100 ml.  Since that time and until I unhooked it at 11 AM it drew off another 100 ml.

Lisa, his day nurse, came in around 9 and since his food was finished she gave him his meds with apple juice. NP John came in shortly after that and we spoke for a while.  He thinks that the mobility is going to be the fix for Mikie’s vomiting problem.  He said the staples in his head incision should stay 10 days, so he has a few more to go.  That may explain why Johnny Hudson did not write the order to do that yesterday like he said he was going to do.  I asked about unhooking him from the IV drip of Potassium Chloride and he said it was only 25 ml per hour we should probably leave it in, especially since Mikie is still loosing some fluids by vomiting.

He finished his meds and apple juice and a I flushed his line and was about to get him up in his chair to try to feed him some Boost pudding and I noticed the large incision on his belly was developing a rash and looked like it was trying to open.  I called for Lisa and showed it to her and she said the NP and Dr. Chandler were making rounds now so she went to get them.  Mikie is sleeping a lot this morning, only waking up to play for a few minutes at a time.  He is making me sleepy! I said I was only going to come up for a few hours and go back home to get our plumbing fixed! It’s now 11:20 AM and I still wait.