Update 4:30 pm

 

After Ethan’s surgery this morning, he has been unresponsive due to his sedation......until the neurology team came to examine him.

Ethan has had almost most staff on the cardiac ICU floor.  He had respitory therapists, ICU cardiologist, pediatric cardiologist, 3-4 nurses, ECMO specialist, the pacing team to make sure his heart rhythm is correct.

The neurology team came because of the possibility that he could have had brain bleed or brain swelling. When I say team, there were like 5 of them, including the multiple people already in the room. 

He has anywhere from 15 to 20 people standing outside his room just watching him. Some call out orders and others do those orders.  

Neurology noticed that his left eye was non responsive and his right eye was fine. He seemed to be responsive to in both feet and knees but when we asked him to squeeze his left hand, he would squeeze his right. But at one point he squeezed both indicating he can get both to work.

He tried to give me a thumbs up with his left hand but he is mostly going in and out of consciousness. He got a little miffed when they brushed his teeth and clamped his teeth down. He refused to open his mouth. He doesn’t like peppermint or strong mint flavors so he might have been pissed about that.

They are disconnecting all of his lines so they can take him to have a CT scan to make sure there is no brain bleed.  He needs blood thinners to make the ECMO machine run and he would have to stop blood thinners if he has a brain bleed.

They removed all the little metal leads glued to every side of his head. It took about 40 minutes to disconnect all of his 12 medications going in. 

They will have results in an hour or so.