Recovery: Day 8 (AM)

So last night went awesome! We appreciate everyone's prayers for sleep; they really helped! Justin slept all night from about 9:3o pm (his last medicine is at 9 pm so we wait until after that) until 5 am (which actually was 4 am vitals; we were on the end of the rotation apparently) and then we ate GREAT and then slept for another hour. I am so happy for that! Our PCA, who does vitals, didn't wake him for midnight vitals (she did them, but didn't wake him) and she didn't make us do weigh in at 4 am (Seriously? Who decided that 4 am was a good time to get babies naked and weigh them? Clearly not the people who then have to put them back to sleep!) So we are requesting that PCA tonight as well!



We have already had 2 chest x-rays and a blood draw and....the last chest tube came out! It has been a good morning. All that is left is the IV, which comes out right before we leave. We got rid of the telemetry box yesterday (aka: the spider). The chest tube removal is actually very easy, it just is a bit painful, so he go some morphine (hopefully, his last dose). This tube was WAY longer than the first one, and I had to take a picture. I had no real measurement, so I used something to which most of you will be able to relate:





If you look above the black and white ring you can see a loop of string around the tube. That is the stitch that held it in place on the outside. The length that is to the left of the string was the part that was inside. It is about 12 inches long. Yikes! They said that it isn't a problem until it starts drying out from having been in a long time, and it was time for this one to come out. There was significantly less drainage yesterday than in previous days.

SO, it looks like we will be going home tomorrow!

We have to return to the cardiologist to have the stitches removed in a couple of days. And we will have a bp medicine and a diuretic medicine for at least a month. The bp medicine may be for life, depending on how the left valve heals (the one with only one muscle). If it can get a good seal, then we could be done with that medicine too. Please pray for that.



I am so glad that we are closer to the end of this saga than to the beginning. I have started contemplating the timing and the meaning of this whole experience, but it will take a bit for them to be complete. We are so very thankful for God's provisions through this time.