Jack's surgeries

Just an update as to how Jack's surgeries have been going. He had the first of two surgeries 3 weeks ago. The first surgery was to lengthen the rods in his back. Back in January the exact same surgery landed us four days in the hospital, so we planned for another 4 day stay, with 2 days on the vent. Wouldn't you know that Jack came off the vent immediately after surgery and went home the next day! It seems everytime we think we might have Jack figured out, he throws a curve ball! We were of course excited and surprised at the same time.

The second surgery took place this past Tuesday. It was the cleft palate repair. Jack again came off the vent right after surgery, but within a few hours Sam and I could tell he was struggling and requested he be put back on the vent. That was Tuesday and as of today (Thursday) he's still on the vent. I should probably back up a little bit in the story. On Tuesday both Jack and I woke up with a cold. After consulting with anesthesia they agreed to go ahead with the surgery stating that Jack appeared to be in good enough health to proceed. Before and during surgery they suctioned out a significant amount of secretions out of his lungs, indicating he was indeed getting sick. So post surgery, Jack was not only dealing with surgery issues he was also dealing with respitory issues. Yesterday they ran a viral panel on him and collected a sample from his trache to see if they could pinpoint the sickness. His viral panel came back negative (which only means he doesn't have a virus they tested for--he could still have a virus, we just don't know what) and his sample is growing bacteria. Only a small amount of bacteria is growing but as a precautionary they started him on two antibiotics to keep the bacteria from growing and turning into an infection.

Today Jack was in a drug-like state all day. The past few days he was on morphine and tylenol with codeine to help manage his pain. The drugs barely seemed to help as he was continiously cranky, irritable and mad. But yesterday was the last time he had received morphine and 1am this morning was the last time he had received the codeine. So the fact that Jack was so out of today was extremely worrisome to me because he didn't have any drugs in his system. As the day went on and his drowsiness and lack of alertness continued the doctors ordered lab work to check if anything was out of sync. All his blood work came back normal. So we can only assume he's still fighting an illness and is wiped out and loopy from that.

The hope for tomorrow is that he's more awake, alert, and responsive. If that happens we will hopefully trial him off the vent, which means we are one step closer to going home! I'll do my best to keep everyone updated!